Steve McClure - Late blooming beyond limits

Steve McClure at 44 is a late bloomer projecting a 9b or possibly one of his FAs will make the trick now when Hubble has been upgraded to 9a. Having trad climbed for 20 years, Steve started sport climbing when he was 24. At 26 he made his first 8a redpoint (in fact it was 8b) and within a year he went from 8a to 8c+. Two years later, in 1998, he made the FA of Mutation as an 9a but as nobody have repeated it yet, the community now considers it as perhaps 9a+. In fact, other than Jordan Buys (who repeated Rainshadow, 9a at Malham) the only person to have repeated any of his 9a's and harder FAs is Adam Ondra who already have said "The upper end of the grade for sure, 3 stars." for Overshadow 9a+. In fact, using the modern variation and link up thinking, Steve has done several more 9a's but just as a personal challenge as he wants all his routes to be of the highest quality. Talking about being a late bloomer and his modest approach, this phrase below says it all. Steve wrote his autobiography entirely alone, without anyone even knowing he was writing it, and when it came to the edit, the editors had an easy job, barely changing a word in his book. "At school I didn't like English, my punctuation and grammar are appalling, and my spelling so bad that I've already been outdone by my seven-year-old daughter." Having met and climbed with Steve several time, he does not come across like a story teller. Instead, he is more like a listener. When he talks he is low budget guy, in fact the opposite from the normal sponsored guys. Working class hero 8a profile from 2006 and here another from 2012. Reviewing his autobiography, here the late bloomer has already reached 9b and the next time we will meet I will just try to sit silent to wait for more great stories, philosophical and training thoughts. After receiving and reading the book, I laid out my thesis asking if Hubble had gotten 9a originally, maybe all your routes would have had one grade higher? (Steve lived 20 minutes from it and this was how he learnt how hard 8c+ was and it was not until he did it he understood that this type of route was his antistyle.) - Did you read the book? Its not a book about climbing and grades really!, was the first sentence in his answer presenting the first draft. Later it took me three emails for getting an OK for the 9b double twist in the first sentance in the article, as he says that there is no way he could do something that is graded 9b. Here you can buy it and here is a video interview from his publisher.