The 2019 IFSC World Championships in Hachioji, Japan in August was the first chance for athletes to earn a Sport Climbing quota place for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Yet the pressure was on not only for the climbers, but also for the routesetting team, who had the small task of separating the world's best climbers in Lead and Bouldering (and Speed, but the route is standardised, of course). In this short film, the thoughts and fears of the IFSC Boulder routesetting team are explored as they test their creations and endure the painstaking task of watching the climbers attempting to solve them. The round doesn't always go to plan, as the Hachioji team discovered...

Balancing spectacle with difficulty is their greatest challenge. The film also explores the slow but steady increase in numbers of female routesetters at international events, with insight from Hachioji setter Katja Vidmar.