The IFSC World Cup season has officially arrived as the boulder event in Keqiao, China took place over the weekend. This comes on the heels of a winter that saw the official announcement from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the three disciplines, Boulder, Lead, and Speed, will all have their own medals, allowing for specialization.

In the Tokyo Olympics the three disciplines were merged together, which created an odd look of elite boulder and lead climbers like Brooke Raboutou (fall) and Chaehyuon Seo (10.64) struggle. In 2024, the IOC separated Speed from Boulder and Lead, making for a more representative competition, but still had some athletes, Natalia Grossman, who specialize in Boulder really struggle on Lead, and vice versa.

The separation of the three disciplines will allow for those who do specialize to have a chance at a medal where they would otherwise struggle in the combined event, but this will also likely have us seeing much more specialization across the World Cups. There are also a couple fundamental changes to the competitions this year, with eight athletes making the finals rather than six, and the scoring now being a point system with 10 points for a zone, and 25 for a top with a 0.1 deduction for each attempt after the first.

The women’s qualification and semi finals went rather chalk in terms of those making it through to the next round, with Nekaia Sanders being the last one out in the qualification round, while Mashiro Kuzuu finished ninth in the semifinals and just missed the finals. The final boulders no the women’s side were really tough. Only one climber scored on all three boulders, as Annie Sanders got the zone in boulders one, two, and four, and topped boulder three. Oriane Bertone had the highest score in the semifinals, so she was the last on the mat and came out to boulder four needing a top to take home the title. She flashed the zone but, like every climber before her, failed to top the difficult boulder and Sanders won her second consecutive Boulder World cup. Erin McNeice took home the bronze.

On the men’s side, there were some big names that missed the finals, as Colin Duffy of the United States finished 18^th, only scoring on two of the four boulders in the round, and British superstar Toby Roberts failed to top any of the boulders and finished in 15^th. In the final, Oren Prihed of Israel failed to top any of the boulders, while Frenchman Paul Jenft only topped one and failed to score on the third. Everyone else topped at least two boulders in the final and scored on every boulder. Maichi Narasaki had an excellent final, topping three of the four and flashing the zone on the fourth, scoring 83.9 points, but ultimately ended up in a distant third place. Sorato Anraku finished second in the semis, so he was second to last on the wall, he entered the final boulder with a 0.2-point lead over Korean Dohyun Lee, meaning a top in two or fewer attempts would guarantee him a gold, and a top on third would land him with tied for first as the worst-case scenario. In typical Anraku fashion, he flashed the boulder and secured gold and finished just 0.3 points shy of a perfect score. Lee wound up topping the problem on his third attempt, scoring 99.3 points in the event, losing by 0.4.

The next World Cup event comes this weekend as the IFSC heads to Wujiang for both Lead and Speed competitions. The Lead competition does have two big names not in the registrant list, as Raboutou and Slovenian superstar and two-time Olympic gold medalist, Janja Garnbret are not among those who will compete. That said, many of the other top female Lead climbers are expected to compete, and could make for an incredibly tight competition.