Innsbruck’s Most Resisted Boulder: 90+ Attempts & One Flash
Half the field never made an official start. The crux of Problem 2 wasn't the zone or the top, but the first move.
Annie Sanders flashed Problem 2 at the Innsbruck World Cup boulder final, leaving the remaining seven athletes with at least 90 combined attempts and just one other reaching the zone, Kneebar data shows.
The read: Boulders this polarising are scarce. Eight athletes managed just 11 official starts across more than 90 attempts - four of them never registered a single one - leaving a lone flash sitting against a field that mostly couldn’t begin the boulder at all.
Finalists: Yuetong Zhang, Ayala Kerem, Oriane Bertone, Erin McNeice, Oceana Mackenzie, Futaba Ito, Camilla Moroni, Annie Sanders.
The numbers:
Sanders: topped, first attempt, in roughly 2 minutes 41 seconds on the wall
The other seven finalists: over 90 combined attempts, zero tops
Only two athletes zoned: Sanders, and Camilla Moroni on her 10th attempt
Yuetong Zhang, Ayala Kerem, Oceana Mackenzie, and Futaba Ito accounted for at least 59 of those 90+ attempts between them
Kerem made 22 attempts without reaching zone, the highest count on the problem
Zone conversion rate at just 25%, top conversion at 12.5%
The problem: The slab, featuring vivid pink Artline volumes, began with a step up into a pair of presses, feet on a thin diagonal volume and jib to register an official start. An awkward slab section followed, stretching athletes to a hidden, semi-blocked foothold. Body positioning was tested throughout, with shifts across presses needed to unlock progression to the final foothold, somewhat mimicking the opening sequence and requiring the finalists to step up and lean to top.
How it happened: The crux wasn’t the hidden foothold in the zone sequence. The real bottleneck was the opening transition, where half the field - Zhang, Kerem, Mackenzie and Ito - were unable to even officially start the boulder. Approached dynamically, most athletes carried momentum from the opening step into the presses and lost balance there; approached statically, they footslipped. McNeice cleared the opening five times, more than anyone but Sanders, each attempt faltering a move later.
Only three athletes reached the zone sequence at all. Sanders and Moroni secured the zone hold; Bertone reached the semi-blocked foothold, set up for the zone hold above it, and fell on that move. The resistance came in two waves: a mass stall at the opening most of the field never passed, and a zone move only two of the three who reached it could hold.
What Sanders did differently: Sanders broke the problem into separate static positions - pinching holds that other athletes pressed, shifting her weight deliberately between each move and chalking throughout. It was the same approach that won her Prague’s opening boulder weeks earlier: patient, exact, almost unhurried in her 161 second-long first attempt.
The setters: Gen Hirashima led the Innsbruck boulder routesetting team, alongside Anna Borella and Tomasz Oleksy, according to official event documentation.