In the first 5 parts of the boulder styles series, I've talked a lot about the different styles and aspects of the two sections that make up a boulder problem.
Today, I want to go back to thinking about whole boulders.
Whenever you talk with routesetters about a boulder round, they talk in tops. How many tops they think a boulder will get is how they judge the level of the climb.
In Innsbruck this year, I chatted with IFSC routesetter Max Ayrton. Max also set in Innsbruck in 2024 and will be setting at the World Championship in Seoul. I asked him about the spread of boulder styles. Max said,
“For the World Cups, no, there are no specific requirements to have specific styles. That was for the OQS and the Olympics.
“For the World Cups we could just set four of the same boulder if we wanted to but generally we try and make sure we've got a hard physical boulder, we've got a jump, we've got a balancey boulder and then we've got something else. Something weird.”
I also asked him how much control he thinks routesetters have over the competition.
“Not as much as some setters like to think they do, I think. The athletes are very unpredictable and sometimes they have a good day or sometimes they have a bad day, and you never quite know what's going to happen. I think the style of the climbing can often help with that.
If you've got something that's risky, that's hard to control, then people can slip off and fall off unexpectedly. Whereas if it's a more physical power boulder, people tend to either do it or they don't do it, and it's quite quick.
So it's good to have a mix of those styles. That really helps with splitting people. [...] You can't control what the athlete's going to do, so there's only so much we can define about how the competition's going to go.”
On setting power boulders, he admits that it has become hard to set for the women as the level continues to rise and it comes down to experience and luck.
“Getting the level right on a power boulder can be quite challenging sometimes.
In the women, it used to be quite easy because you just set something that was too hard for everyone except Janja and then she'd do it and it'd be fine. But it's kind of less like that now because there are quite a few of them that are all kind of fighting for that top spot. And in the men, it's all kind of random as well.
I think a lot of it's just experience and just having a feel for where they're going to be, what they can do. And then, yeah, setting something hard and seeing what happens. I think there's a lot more luck involved than some people like to admit.”
How many tops do they get?
Table 1: Tops Statistics across the 2024 World Cup season split by gender and round
| Sex | Round | Average Tops | Max Tops | Min Tops |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men | Final | 8.0 | 14 | 4 |
| Men | Semi-Final | 31.2 | 48 | 17 |
| Women | Final | 12.2 | 15 | 10 |
| Women | Semi-Final | 19.6 | 34 | 12 |
Looking over the 2024 season, we see that the semi-final round had an average of 31.2 tops for men, while only 19.6 tops for women. The situation is reversed in the final, with men's finals averaging about 8 while the women usually top 12 of the boulders.
That is an average of 2 tops per woman and 1.3 tops for each man in the final. In 2024, there were 6 athletes in the finals and 20 in the semi-finals for Boulder World Cups.
If we dig a layer deeper and look at each boulder, we see that athletes are more successful on boulder one, and for the women, the fourth boulder had the fewest number of tops in the final. For the men, the second boulder has that honour.
To compare across rounds, we can't use the number of tops. In 2024, there were 20 athletes in the semi-final and 6 in the final. So we need to look at the success rates on each boulder based on the number of athletes who climbed on them.
In the chart above, we see that for the men, the final is often harder than the semi-final. Men's final boulders had an average success rate of 33% compared to 39% for semi-finals.
The opposite is true for women. Semi-final boulders had a success rate of 25% compared to 51% for final boulders. The first women's final boulder in Salt Lake City was the only boulder in 2024 to have a 100% success rate.
Can we predict the number of tops and zones using the attributes?
One of the questions I am interested in is “how much influence (or control) do the routesetters have on the final results?" Competition climbing is a weird sport as our field of play is created by others, and the field of play changes each time the athletes come out. Not just between competitions, but between rounds and within a round.
One way to understand how much influence the properties of the boulders have on the result is to build a model using only those properties. This model will try to predict the number of tops, the key number that routesetters themselves use when talking about boulders.
I have tried to create a model, using machine learning techniques I use in my day job as a data scientist, and it did not go well. The number of boulders is 76, across men and women, and both rounds. I found this number to be too small to create a reliable model that would help me understand the predictive value of these style attributes.
I plan to revisit this in the off-season, looking at other techniques and gathering more data. To be continued.
News
- In the Koper World Cup last weekend, Erin McNeice and Alberto Ginés López secured their 2025 Lead World Cup Series title. Erin finished fourth and Alberto finished second in Koper; the gold medal for Alberto remaining elusive.
Janja Garnbret won her 31st Lead World Cup gold medal, with Chaehyun Seo second and Laura Rogora third. Sorato Anraku won his 7th, with Toby Roberts rounding out the podium with a bronze medal. - The final Speed World Cup of the season is in Guiyang, China, this weekend, which will decide the series with all 6 World Cups counting.
Kiromal Katibin leads Sam Watson by 261 points in the Men's series. Jianguo Long is third on 484 points behind Sam. Ryo Omasa, in fourth, can also technically win the series, but needs to win and have all three athletes ahead of him struggle in Guiyang.
Aleksandra Miroslaw is top of the women's series ranking, but she isn't competing in China, so she is unlikely to win the series. Emma Hunt is only 80 points behind her. Desak Made Rita Kusuma Dewi 110 points behind Emma. Yafei Zhou is only 10 points behind Desak, so it will be a tight end to the series. Jimin Jeong can also win the series if she wins and Emma, Desak, and Yafei struggle. - The IFSC announced that the streaming service Bilibili is the exclusive broadcaster of sport climbing in China, reaching hundreds of millions of people. Bilibili will show the final Speed World Cup of the 2025 season, the World Championship, and the whole 2026 season.
Media Recommendations
Learn about the story of Pa Mitengo Climbing and Calisthenics, Zambia’s first indoor climbing wall.
Tomoa and Meichi Narasaki recap their 2025 World Cup seasons.
Matt Groom shares the behind-the-scenes of the Koper World Cup.
Toby Roberts shares a Boulder training session with members of the British and French teams, in Sheffield.
Matt Groom tells the story of Lucka Rakovec's return to the World Cup circuit after recovering from thyroid cancer. Plus all the action from Koper on the World Climbing Club.
Where to buy tickets
Guiyang IFSC Lead World Cup
When: 12th–13th September
Where: China
Where to buy tickets: Tickets are available locally.
Seoul IFSC World Championship and Para Climbing World Championship
When: 20th–28th September
Where: South Korea
Where to buy tickets: Tickets will be needed for the following (all indoor events):
- Paraclimbing Finals
- Speed Qualification and Finals - Women and Men
- Lead Semi-Finals and Finals - Women and Men
- Boulder Semi-Finals and Finals - Women and Men.
All other events are free of charge. Access to the venue is limited. Entry is restricted to first-come, first-served.
Tickets for the indoor events are available through Interpark Global. The indoor rounds are held in the KSPO Dome in the Olympic Park.
IFSC Climbing Grand Finals Fukuoka 2025
When: 23rd–26th October
Where: Japan
Where to buy tickets: The competition will be held at the Chikuho Green Park / Iizuka Sports Resort The Retreat in Fukuoka Prefecture. The location is inaccessible by public transport.
Tickets for the event are now on sale. You can buy them through HIS Visit Japan.
Laval IFSC Paraclimbing World Cup
When: 24th–26th October
Where: France
Where to buy tickets: You can buy tickets for the Para Climbing event and the Continental Speed event here.
