[stone]

Burden of Dreams has been replicated indoors. Do competition problems also get cloned in various venues? Could whole comps get cloned around the country/world as with that MoonBoard Masters but not just board style problems? Perhaps GB Climbing or whatever could encourage standardised walls to facilitate that?

What made me wonder about this was hearing of the great travel expense/hassle for participants of international competitions and contrasting that with the Moon Board Masters.

[jwi]

Interesting concept. One issue I can see is that an average boulderproblem on the world cup costs about as much as three fully set moon boards, just in holds and volumes.

[petejh]

The one Moonboard masters I watched didn't appear to be a level playing field despite climbers attempting the same holds/moves - different temperature and humidity between venues/countries/continents, different time zones. In the one I watched Daniel Woods kept greasing off holds complaining about the humidity... might just have been having a bad day though!   

[Paul B]

Maybe Ryan had put some butter on the holds?

[jwi]

Also, the moon board are not exactly of the same thickness from batch to batch.

[Dac]

I don’t think you could really expect to hold a fair competition using clones of the same problem in different venues; minor differences in hold position and angle would have too much of an effect, not to mention differences temperature and humidity.

As for cloning comp problems to give potential competition climbers more experience of the styles of problems they would encounter there is no reason it wouldn’t work. But I suspect the prohibitive cost of the holds and requirement for a venue to have a wall of the correct angle that they are willing to strip of all other problems and set aside makes it unlikely to happen.

[SA Chris]

"comp walls" seem to be a thing in some bouldering venues with a few choice problems on them but little else. Maybe impossible to make identical clones, but maybe make a reasonable replica of some from international comps?

[jwi]

I cannot stress enough how expensive a world cup boulder is. Not only does it use super expensive holds it also takes up at least 5 x 3.5 m of wall surface where there cannot be any other problems.

[remus]

I cannot stress enough how expensive a world cup boulder is. Not only does it use super expensive holds it also takes up at least 5 x 3.5 m of wall surface where there cannot be any other problems.

https://www.instagram.com/expensiveboulders/ makes some interesting browsing. I wouldn't be surprised if an average wc boulder clocked in at >£2k in holds alone (assuming you bought all the holds + volumes outright at RRP).

Also slightly relevant (and pretty cool!), there's a company who take 3d scans of all the wc boulders https://onlineobservation.com/en/competitions If you had the 3D scans I wonder whether you could make some backyard versions of the problems on homemade holds?

[stone]

Might there be some economy of scale if routinely dozens of replicas were being set up?

Can't the holds be reused? Climbing walls need holds anyway don't they?

I suppose this needn't just be about world cup. It could be a way to have a lower-cost, mass-participation competition -perhaps international. If someone wiped the floor in that, then perhaps they might catch the eye for financial support to take part in the world cup?

[edshakey]

Can't the holds be reused? Climbing walls need holds anyway don't they?

Yes but they would be buying them quite frequently - part of the WC industry is hold companies making new shapes of holds/volumes and debuting them at world cups, so often the holds they set with are brand new. To even vaguely keep up would require buying in new holds far too often to be viable.

I suppose this needn't just be about world cup. It could be a way to have a lower-cost, mass-participation competition -perhaps international. If someone wiped the floor in that, then perhaps they might catch the eye for financial support to take part in the world cup?

Bearing in mind what others said above about Moonboard Masters and varying conditions, I don't see anyone reading much into a distributed comp, let alone providing money off the back of it. And with comp money being wildly different country to country, you could only really do it on a national level, at which point the governing body would surely just say come to nationals or team trials or whatever the usual process is.

Basically, I don't see cloned comp problems being any more than something a training tool or a wall novelty, and even then it won't be exact clones, it'd be similar movements on similar hold - which is kind of already what happens.

The only thing similar which seems more plausible is setters uploading their problems to a database, and other setters being able to browse and use those ideas. With enough users, there would likely be boulders set with popular hold sets that other walls might have, and on enough angles that it might be reproducible. But even then... it takes away the huge creative part of the setting process which setters will be reluctant to lose. Wasn't this discussed on a podcast recently? Maybe a careless talk one?

[stone]

Thanks for all the insight/knowledge everyone!

I was thinking about this because people on the "saving the BMC" thread were saying that currently there were huge financial barriers stopping all but the most-well-off from participating in competition climbing. I guess there is no easy solution to that then.

[petejh]

This thing about 'huge financial barriers' to entering a European comp - does this hold water? Has it become beyond the wit of man to part-fund sending some keen teenagers to some European comps without financially sinking the BMC or being unaffordable for parents? How much does the cheapest form of travel and a few nights in basic accom, close enough to the venue, actually cost if you try to do it with some advance planning by one person?
We're not talking expensive flights and individual hire cars/taxis across Europe here (ahem..). Get on a coach, stay in basic hotel or hostel for a few nights, get back on the coach to come home - what am I missing here (safeguarding person)? A few hundred quid per non-elite athlete at most? OK you may not be able to do every comp desired, but some is better than none. I don't understand why it's supposedly prohibitive for GBC to fund or part-fund that.

Or am I being naïve in how difficult/expensive it really is to go to a western European city and back via budget public transport and stay in some budget accom

For the elite GBC climbers yes I'd expect a higher tier of costs to reflect their higher status and higher expected performance.

Might there be too high of an expectation - from one of athlete/parents/GBC - of quality of transport/accom/local travel to/from venue? Possibly leading to self-inflicted damage to chances of getting to go to comps? Another risk when free grant money starts getting dished out in large amounts, on top of parasitic self-serving management, is expectation management.

[thunderbeest]

Is there any cost for the participation? Entree ticket?

[SA Chris]

No free meals.

[rodma]

I'm speaking purely from my beyond-the-grave perspective here.

I expect that if not a junior, the cost of going abroad to compete is still relatively inexpensive, presuming the competitor in question is not a primadonna.

The entry fee certainly didn't used to be much (it ought not to have gone up significantly being as the prize money hasn't), which to be fair the bmc covered. Generally we as competitors covered everything else, so all piled into the nearest formule1 or similar,  shared a hire car etc.

I think the annual costs referred to may well be accurate when taking into account all of the team training events,  and if you were to travel to every available international event (presuming you're selected to do so). This would be significantly worse if you're talking a parent accompanying a child competitor.

When I was first competing I was making fractionally over minimum wage, but I appreciate that that minimum was worth more than the minimum today in real terms, and the sport was far more amateur, so the bar to entry was, I expect lower (cheaper,  nae private coaches and the likes).

The one sacrifice for me, since I was holding down a regular job at the same time, was that between the training and long weekends to compete, it left very little time for climbing trips. Boohoo right