The same wall config is only for the speed competition. There has been debate about changing it though, cause like you said they become muscle memory and hyper-optimized.
There are other forms of competition:
- bouldering: how many of 4 short boulder problems can you finish
- lead: how high can you get on a longer, higher route (pictured on the right of the image in the article)
In these ones the problems are switched up every competition.
This is also why every climber complained about speed climbing being a part of the climbing competition in the previous Olympics.
It's an entirely different discipline. Seeing lead climbers compete in speed climbing is like seeing Eliud Kipchoge matched up with Usain Bolt for sprinting.
Boulder and lead are at least somewhat related, although I still think it would be nice to see separate competitions here, too.
> not every climber. Its clearly a different discipline. Thats why boldering/lead is separate from speed climbing.
It wasn't separate in the previous Olympics, that's my point.
>But then lead is different to top rope and sport different to trad. And indoor is very different to outdoor.
Except for trad most climbers I know do a mix of all of these.
Speed climbing is just so different from everything else that I don't even know one climber out of the hundred or so that I know that does it regularly.
I do think it'd be amazing to see a "decathlon-like" competition where runners were measured in the 100, 1500, and 10k cross country, though. Figuring out how to even it out would be a chore, though.
There are other forms of competition:
- bouldering: how many of 4 short boulder problems can you finish
- lead: how high can you get on a longer, higher route (pictured on the right of the image in the article)
In these ones the problems are switched up every competition.