The EconomistDecember 21st 2019 Route setting 67genderasintheirFrenchnesstheroute-settersreflectanearlier
time.Theifscislookingtodosomethingaboutthis.
ThevenueinKranj,a municipalsportshallwhichonweekdays
teemswithpupilstakingtheirpeclasses,hashostedclimbing
worldcupssince1996.Itswallissteep,whichinclimber-speak
meansnotverticalbutseverelyoverhanging: 13 metreshighand
juttingoutby 10 metres,foranaverageinclineofnegative 36 de-
grees.Thisbasicarchitecturehasnotchangedin 23 years.Thestyle
ofrouteschartedonit has.Sohaveclimbingcompetitions,andthe
sportitself.
Nextyear,climbingwillreachwhatisoftenseenasa sport’s
pinnaclewhen,inTokyo,it makesitsOlympicdebut.TheInterna-
tionalOlympicCommittee(ioc) wantstoattractyoungeraudi-
encestoitsageingfranchise,andclimbinghasthevibetheyare
lookingfor.Tokyowaskeen;climbingispopularinJapan.
Thegameswillinvolvetwootherdisciplinesaswellaslead
climbing.“Speedclimbing”iswherecompetitorsraceeachother
upa standardisedsequenceofholds,thesameineachtourna-
ment,ona 15-metre-highwallwitha five-degreeoverhang.“Boul-
dering”involvesclimbingupa lowrockface,usuallynomorethan
twometresofftheground.Howallthiswillgrabthepublic,young
and otherwise, remains to be seen. But creating all the lead routes
and boulders will mean a great deal of high-pressure work, on a
vastly public stage, for Mr Bindhammer and his colleagues.Poles and rockfaces
Your correspondent started rock-climbing as a student in Poland
20 years ago, when an early commercial climbing gym opened in
the bowels of the Warsaw University library. Since then the once-
niche pursuit has gone mainstream. Indoor climbing walls have
mushroomed around the world, including in some unlikely
places: 22 Bishopsgate, a snazzy new office tower in London’s fi-
nancial district, has installed one between the 25th and 26th
floors. Britain’s capital has around 30 commercial climbing gyms,
twice as many as in 2012. Tokyo is said to have more than 100. Stefa-
no Ghisolfi, a star of Team Italy, recently modelled for Intimissimi,
an underwear firm. Shauna Coxey, a top British climber, is spon-
sored by Aldi, a grocer. In March the Oscar for best documentary
was awarded to a film, “Free Solo”, about a ropeless ascent of El
Capitan, a 1km-high hulk of granite in Yosemite Valley, California
by Alex Honnold, a leading American climber.
The film brought to the masses not just the physicality and the
raw courage of the sport, but also its subtler grace and its knottily
intellectual side. Marc Le Menestrel, an accomplished climber and
author, who also teaches decision theory at the inseadbusiness
school in Singapore, talks of the sport’s quest for “movement and
beauty” as well as its “intellectual casse-tête”. The job of the route-
setter is to make that experience possible and bring it out in its
highest form. They are not just sculptors of walls; they are chore-
ographers, forcing athletes into a vertical ballet in which they have
to think on their fingertips and on their tippytoes.
Route-setters have much in common. They are lean, with Pop-
eye forearms, callused palms and finger joints gnarled from years
of squeezing tiny edges. Like everyone, they are prone to bias. No
one can stop being French, or flexible, or tall, says Mr Le Menestrel.
They have personal styles and imbibe national ones (“French
style” is elegant and static, Japanese fearless and dynamic). And
they are sturdy.
A few hours of setting and testing competition-style boulder-
ing routes at the Climbing Works in Sheffield, a gym part-owned by
Percy Bishton, the ifsc’s British head of route-setting, left your
reasonably fit correspondent with scraped forearms, scuffed
shins, skinless fingertips, and a whole body of aches with which to
come into work the next day. Mr Bishton was undoubtedly in bet-
ter shape as he boarded a plane to Qatar to set bouldering routes for
the World Beach Games.Therouteshesetsnowaremuchharderthanthose
tackledatthefirstinternationalsport-climbingcom-
petition,heldintheItalianAlpsin1985.Backthen,the
routeswere setby nature,inthatthecompetitors
climbedupa naturaloutdoorcliffnearthetownofBar-
donecchia.Thatapproachgivesanunfairadvantageto
peoplefamiliarwiththehostcrag,whichisoneofthe
reasonsthatthesportnowfavoursuniquecreations
indoors;theycanbekeptunderwraps.Unlikenatural
stonescapes, which climbers frown on tampering
with,indoorroutescanalsobefine-tuned.Thefirstin-
doorcompetitiontookplaceinVaulx-en-Velinnearthe
FrenchcityofLyonthefollowingyear.Theroute-set-
ter’scraftwasborn.
Likeallexperts,route-settingteamsareinclinedto
groupthink.A certain“intersubjectivity”isrequiredin
ordertocurbthis,saysMrLeMenestrelphilosophical-
ly.MrBindhammer’sKranjcrewincludedtwoother
ifsc-certified colleagues—YannGenoux, afull-time2
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