Baptiste Ometz who last year won one Euro Boulder Youth Cup has had two amazing weeks having done Fauler Wili 8B+ in Valle Bavona and five 8B's in Magic Wood. During one day he did seven boulder 8A and harder. The 180 cm 15 year old did his first 8B when he was 11 years old. The reason for the rather slow progress until the last week are numerous injuries like like broken wrist, toe problems and meniscus. Since February he has been OK bouldering four times a week. Baptiste's says his Easter tick list, including eight 8A's and harder in a day, could have been much longer.On the last day, everything was dry and I could try many boulders and somehow send most of them really quickly. I wanted to climb many more 8a’s, but I unfortunately made a huge split.

Domen Škofic has done Water World in Osp. "Second ascent after Klemen Becan :) The best and definitely the hardest line in the Osp cave. Needed good 10 tries and feels very solid for the grade. My second hardest 9a." Domen has been a very successful competition climber for five years, having won 12 Euro Youth Cups and Championships. Last year he was #9 in the Lead World Cup after once being #3.

Euan McFadyen has had a great Easter trip to Magic Wood where he did his first 8A+', Massive Attack and Left hand of darkness, and also his first 8B (A+), Dark Sakai. The hardest boulder Euan had done one year ago was a 7C and the amazing thing is that he started climbing in 2012! "Before I started climbing I would go to the gym at school a lot, which meant that I had a strong upper body when I started climbing. I also did a bit of gymnastics.

Tamás Farkas has done Histerija 8c+ in Misja pec. "The first real project of my life. Around 30 tries. I felt 5 times from the last hard move in bad conditions. Milestone for me! :)" Tamás is from Hungary which has just one big crag Kis-Gerecse, so there is a lot of travelling going on for him.

Based on a poll with close to 900 unique votes, Best Euro Climbing Destination? Picture from Olof Morsing - Kalymnos. 18 % Kalymnos 14 % Siurana/Margalef 12 % Céüse 10 % Frankenjura 08 % Southern France, The Alpes 06 % Rodellar 04 % Arco, Scandinavia, Geyik Bayiri, Southern Spain 08 % Other (No other crag reached 1 %)

Eddie Fowke, who runs the The Circuit WC magazine and who is going to most of the WCs in 2014, will make short reports that will be published on 8a. Here he gives some interesting thoughts about the very short 2014 season. "The first thing that stands out about this season is how compact it is. This is a World Championship year and the whole IFSC Bouldering World Cup series is squeezed into two months. That’s right, from the opening round in Chongqing starting on the 26th of April to the closing round in Laval finishing 28th of June there will be 8 Bouldering World Cups!!! Over the two months there are only TWO weekends where the athletes will not be competing! This is an incredibly tight schedule that will wear down the climbers. It means that preseason prep is more vital than ever as once the season starts training opportunities will be compromised. Flying from comp to comp takes a lot of time and is draining on the athletes. If an athlete does all the competitions they will be flying more than once around the world and will be spending more than a working week (40 hours) in the air plus many more hours in airports etc. It will be interesting to see the effect this has on performances by the end of the season.

Adam Ondra has done two 9a's, the FA of Back Road in Rovereto and the classic Underground in Arco. "4 goes in total. First try flash in 2011 - fell off from the top. 2012 - retro flash and fell off from the top. 2014 - retro onsight/flash (as I forgot the sequence) and fell off from the top. Sent 30mis later." In total Adam has done 100+ routes 9a and harder and using his personal gradings, it is 92. In Arco, Adam also onsighted Warbeast giving it a personal 8c grade. "Really close to onsighting Bucking Bronco 8c+ and another 8c+ project in another area." Two weeks ago he commented, "Two months of hard training is over, let's see if it pays off." So let us see if it is possible to raise the bar before the lead World Cup season starts July 10th. This would mean to do multiple 9a's onsight as it probably is not enough time to go for a 9c.

Mikel Linacisoro, one of the best junior slalom skiers in Spain, has done two 8b+, Ollako Mari in Equino and Kale Borroka in Siurana. He has also onsighted two 8a's. Last year, the 13 year old did his first 8c+ and onsighted four 8a+.