The Economist - USA (2019-12-21)

66 Holiday specials The EconomistDecember 21st 2019

1

I

t is8amona SeptemberSundayinKranj,a half-hourdrivefrom

Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, and Christian Bindhammer is star-

ing at a blank wall. It is his canvas. In a few hours it will be trans-

formed from 182 square metres of drab beige and grey into a fever

dream of Kandinsky colours. A week later it will be unveiled to

1,300 spectators. Within a month, another 180,000 will have be-

held it on YouTube.

Mr Bindhammer is not an artist, as such. But there is a beauty to

what he does. With plastic “jibs” no bigger than two £1 coins

stacked on top of each other, bigger amorphous blobs made of res-

in or fibreglass and brightly coloured “volumes”—cubes, cylin-

ders, tetrahedrons and stranger, compound shapes—that might be

the size of a sofa, he will make this featureless, overhanging wall

into a sublime physical challenge for some of the world’s best

sportsmen and -women.

The competitors in the “lead climbing” world cup arranged by

the International Federation of Sport Climbing (ifsc) need things

up which to climb. This year, in Kranj, it is Mr Bindhammer’s task

to provide those things. Every stage of the competition will require

a unique route, never seen before, which tests the different facets

of a multifaceted sport: strength, endurance, flexibility, footwork,

mental fortitude. Because climbing is one of the rare elite sports

not to favour a specific body type, the routes must be equally chal-

lenging to diminutive featherweights and towering beefcakes.

Ideally,therewillbepointsthatrequirethesortof

crowd-pleasing leaps that thrill aficionados and casual

viewers alike. The walls ought to look stunning, too.

There are further demands. In other sports where

athletes face obstacle courses the competitors are ex-

pected to make it to the end, either as quickly—down-

hill skiing, kayak slalom—or showily—freestyle snow-

boarding—as possible. Show-jumpers are expected to

finish their rounds, too, though with points deducted

for faults. Lead climbing is not like that. What matters

is how far you get before falling. So Mr Bindhammer’s

walls have to be hard enough that few, if any, will top

them, but not have any specific passage so hard that

everyone falls at the same point, effectively making the

competition a draw. It is like designing a slalom in

which each skier crashes out at a different gate.

Mr Bindhammer is part of the ifsc’s elite group of 31

“route-setters”. Of that group, nine are from France, a

reminder of that country’s dominance of sport-climb-

ing in the 1990s. The rest are a mix of Germans, Italians,

Poles and other Europeans, as well as a few Japanese.

Only two of the 31 are women. In recent years, female

participation in the sport has grown—men and women

now compete in roughly equal numbers—but in their

Stonemasons

KRANJ AND SHEFFIELD

Route setting Climbers need something to climb,

be it in a school gym or the Olympics