On Thursday, the Olympic male qualification starts in Toulouse with Speed at 11.00 followed 13.00 with Bouldering and finishes at 16.45 with Lead. There are 22 male participants, out of which 18 battles for six tickets to Tokyo. Japan comes with four male but they have already filled their country quota. In theory, it might be good enough to be #12 also France and Germany might fill their quota. The Top-8 go to the final meaning, it is the qualification day that counts and the final day is most probably just a formality training of the Olympic final format. As the result is based on multiplication, it is almost 100 % certain that qually winners in each disciplin will make it to the Olympics. In practice, also the runner ups are expected to get a ticket. Here is the 8a speculation for who will get a ticket to Tokyo. The reason why there are so many male Lead specialists is because most of the Japanese are boulder specialists and also rather good in Speed. In other words, if Japan gets the two first positions in Boulder and perform also in Speed, three Lead specialists and Adam Ondra are expected to get high up in the ranking. 1. Adam Ondra CZE - Lucka Rakovec SLO 2. Bassa Mawem FRA - YiLing Song CHN 3. Alberto Gines Lopez ESP - YueTong Sang CHN 4. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA - Jain Kim KOR 5. Sasha Lehmann SUI - Julia Chanourdie FRA 6. Alfian Muhammed INA - Anouck Jaubert FRA A very interesting side note is how Adam Ondra performance in Speed. His current PB is 7.87 at the same time as most are under 7 seconds. If Adam does not come close to seven seconds, it just might be strategically to skip serious Speed training. With the multiplication system, it does not matter so much if you are #15 or #20 in the qually or #7 or #8 in the final.

Hazel Findlay reports on Insta that she has done Ron Kauk's Magic Line Yosemite. The first trad redpoint, placing all gear on lead, was done by his son Lonnie in 2018, upgrading it to 8c+. Hazel tried it briefly last year and this fall for a month sending it on her fourth try on her last day. The Brit has previously done up to 8b+ trad and also several hard Big Walls up to 8b. Jacopo Larcher and belaying was Babsi Zangerl. "It was stressful getting heartbreakingly close twice but in reality doing it on the last day of the trip meant that this route was the perfect challenge for me, testing me right to the end."

Marwin Winkler, who is doing a PhD in performance analysis in competition climbing, has done Mangarbo 9a/+ in Villanueva del Rosario. "The first time I got into contact with it, was making a video of Seb Bouin doing the FA some years ago and Edu Marín repeating it shortly after. At this time I was so intimidated by tininess of the holds that I never really dared to try. During the last years, I always remembered a friend of mine saying that I might do it - something I didn't believe at this time. After doing Mandanga total, my first 9a last spring I convinced my self to give it a try... It's a huge lesson that I learned from it: Not to keeping myself within limits, daring to try something that first seems impossible. The goal of my PhD is the analysis of the performance structure of the single individual disciplines Speed, Bouldering and Lead as well as for the Olympic combined climbing format and to construct and validate profiles of requirements."

Barbara Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher have done the 950m The Nose 8b+ in Yosemite. The 31 pitches straight up in the middle of El Capitan was first free climbed in 1993 by Lynn Hill, video as an 8a. Later it has been upgraded to 8b+. " It is totally crazy...for me she is a real inspiration... I couldn't climb it how she did it..." This was Zangerl's fifth and Larcher's fourth big wall on El Capitan. More info at her Insta. Babsi has pretty much done most of the hardest long multi-pitches in the world and she is well beyond the Top-10 in this category also including the male. Adding also sport climbing up to 9a, trad up to 8c and bouldering up to 8B, the Austrian is the best female overall rock climber in the the world. Noteworthy is that the 8B she did more than ten years ago being one of the very best in that discipline. Later, in 2009, she got an herniated vertebral disc which made her stop bouldering. "It took us 6 days... we had heavy haulbags to haul. That made us so tired the first two days where we climbed and hauled a lot of pitches. So we climbed up to the Doll tower the first day. Second day we climbed to Great roof. Thrid day we both did the great roof. That is a really hard pitch. Very techy and pumpy on super bad footholds. Day four, we climbed up to changing corners...there we rested for a day! Changing corners are the Crux of the Nose!! It is very hard for the grade, I think. We both laybacked all the crux. It was hard to remember the body positions and footholds. Because there are not really footholds...it is just smearing on nothing most of the time. Super powerful! That was the biggest challenge!!

Ola Przybysz, who has been in China for over ten years, has done her second 8c+, Redpoint Dinner in Yangshou. It was bolted in 2009 by Chris Sharma and then Wangqing Hua did it as the first 9a in China but later it was downgraded. "After over two weeks of trying I felt that finishing it is very possible. One week later I was passing the crux move most of the time and falling on the endurance moves on the top, every time a bit higher. One day, driving to the crag, I knew I will send it that day. I got very excited. Roped up, rocked through the lower moves all the way to the crux. As I pulled all the way to little pinch tufa and got ready for dynamic move my fingers slipped and I took a fall. During the fall, one hand got caught in quickdraw what caused some serious damage to my pinky finger. The injury needed some surgery intervention what for me meant, that I will not be climbing my project for quite a while. I came back this year and the climb took me another 4 weeks of trying before finally, three days ago I clipped the anchor. Its a really amazing line and definitely the hardest route I have ever climbed."