UKH

Not mine but I climb at TCA Glasgow

I was told some new problems were set by Alan Cassidy (TCA director) and earlier in the year a friend sent me a link to Alan climbing an 8C, Nordic Flower.

According to Wiki, the first 8C in the world was set in 1987. 

So 30 years ago the very best in the world were climbing at Alan's standard. During which time the highest went from 8C to 9C (Silence, 2017, Adam Ondra)

Is this phenomena seen in other sports? World class performance becoming...regional performance...I don't know, how many 8C climbers are out there? Is a centre director of Alan's ability rare?

Will the TCA directors in 2050 be climbing 9C and me 8a (I'll be lucky to get up the stairs)

Climbing is a very young sport, and the science around training for climbing has only really been developed over the timeframe you're talking about. 35 years ago the leading edge of training was a Bachar ladder and a divers belt. 45 years ago it would have been a vertical wall with some concrete lumps added.

I think the rate of improvement will slow down as the years pass, as it would in any other sport

Do try to follow the convention;

F8c or 8c =french sports climbing grade.

f8C or 8C = Font bouldering grade. 

Then people will have a clue what you are on about. 

I think you under-estimate other people.

no, the OP is pretty confusing. he starts off talking about TCA (bouldering wall) and 8C (bouldring nomenclature, not that i was aware of the little c verses big C distinction...), then mentions silence and ondra (sport), then goes back to talking about routes set by the director at TCA (bouldering again...). So im not certain if the OP is talking about sport or bouldering grades, or if they even know which they are talking about themselves!

but to give you a somewhat sensible answer... climbing grades are completely unquantifiable. how big a jump exactly is 8c-9c? hard to give a comparison outside of the climbing world.

but to use track cycling as a completely unrelated example, things have jumped massively in 30 years in a purely quantifiable manner. the kind of times which were winning olympic medals in the 80's are now being done by (very good) punters at track leagues. so yes in some other sports, something which was considered top of the world 30+ years ago is now considered a good regional/national standard. but that is largely driven by the technological improvements and proliferation of facilities.

taking something like athletics as a counterpoint, which is relatively unreliant on technology, and there is a running track in nearly every town and village, times havent improved all that much. sub 10s in the 100m was world class then, and its still world class now. take Bolts winning times out of the equation, and the average time of the 100m olympic finalists hasnt changed much at all since the 80's

There are lots of 8c climbers out there - plenty at my local gym, 9a even.

Ive asked similar questions before, I always thought that the difficulty between grades reduced the further up the scale you went but according to the wads the grades get further apart.

I wouldn't know, major punter.

I’m probably going to get pulled up on accuracy, but to name a few...

Sam Whittaker - Climbing Works

Steve Dunning - The Depot

Ian Vickers - Boulder UK

Jerry Moffatt - The Foundry

John Dunne - Manchester Climbing Centre