Throwback Thursday: To The Days of 4+ Minutes

Remember when the IFSC bouldering rules stated that athletes had four minutes plus to attempt a problem? This meant that if the time ran out while they were on the wall, climbers could continue with their attempt for as long as they could.

For the 2017 World Cup season, the rules were changed such that the climbers’ time runs out, period, at 4 minutes, regardless of where they are on a boulder. As a result, you no longer see these famous “marathon” attempts to finish boulders at World Cup events.

Check out two of the most memorable 4+ tops from the 2014 World Cup circuit.

(1) Rei Sugimoto on Men’s Final problem 3 in Grindelwald, Switzerland. Sugimoto stuck the first dyno move with 16 seconds left on the clock and then took a palm-sweating (just shy of) three minutes to finish the problem.

(2) Rustam Gelmanov on Men’s Final problem 2 in Innsbruck, Austria. Gelmanov’s effort on this problem is arguably more impressive than that of Sugimoto as he not only had to negotiate strange body positions, but he had to keep his body engaged the whole time.

It was truly a spectacular display of problem-solving, body awareness and tension, patience and perseverance.