No texture? Add water!

During the semifinal at the Bern Boulder World Championship, the athletes faced a boulder problem that had a hold with no texture. Many struggled coming to grips with this problem, but Yannick Flohé did it with ease after having pouring water on his fingers. (c) IFSC

How did you come up with this idea?
It’s obvious if you have dry fingers there’s no friction on the no texture holds so I tried to get rid of the chalk with sweaty fingers the no texture feels quite sticky. I already used techniques like only chalking the fingertips and cleaning my palms in iso when I knew there would be a press on dual texture in the next boulder. I feel like using chalk on no texture is worse than not using chalk on regular holds when it comes to grip 😅

How do you like this modern school bouldering?
I think no texture holds suck, it just adds another random factor that is not based on climbing skills and there are already enough such things in modern comp bouldering. I think most of the rounds were pretty good lately, however, it’s just frustrating if every round comes down to a slab or a paddle/swing and jump dyno. I would be really excited to see some more powerful climbing but most of the moves (even the „powerful“ moves) are just dynamic moves with big footholds, going from one stable position into the next one. I would love to see some more cut loosing on bad holds or pure upper body strength with poor footholds. I know it’s super difficult to set anyway it would be nice to have some more separation on this kind of boulders. The "every athlete is sooo strong we need to challenge them in different moves“ argument doesn’t really count because the physical difference even between the top athletes is huge in my opinion.

Mejdi Schalck did also use water in a successful way. "It was a very weird experience. We had the same hold in the iso so we did some tests on it and with our coaches we realized that the best thing was water."