The finalists with the qualification results in brackets: Tyler Landman (9), Alban Levier (3), Alexey Rubtsov (5), Jakob Schubert (15), Jorge Verhoeven (13) and Martin Stranik (19) Janja Garnbret (9), Clementine Kaiser (15), Melissa Le Neve (1), Megan Mascarenas (3), Akiyo Noguchi (1) and Shauna Coxsey (5) Complete results

The French team has been on a training camp in Cuenca and they seem to be in a great shape as both Gauthier Supper, #2 in WC 2015, and Romain Desgranges, #6, did El Intento 9a. In fact, Desgranges did the 30-metre-long route in just three attempts, which took him an hour. So does that mean that you could do a 9a+ in some tries and a 9b after some projecting? Probably!

The first Boulder World Cup highlighted the fact that it seems hard to win starting last in the final. Tyler Landman and Janja Garnbret won the semifinal in great style, and especially Janja was just superior, but in the final Tyler was last and Janja second-last without having done a single Boulder. Final starting order in brackets. 1. Alexey Rubtsov (4) - Shauna Coxsey (1) 2. Martin Stranik (1) -Melissa Le Neve (4) 3. Jorg Verhoeven (2) - Megan Mascarenas (2) 4. Alban Levier (5)- Akiyo Noguchi (3) 5. Jakob Schubert (3)- Janja Garnbret (6) 6. Tyler Landman (6) - Clementine Kaiser (5) Complete results Interesting is that Alexey only participated in one World Cup last year, and he won. In 2009, he won the World Championship when he was #6 in the semifinal, i.e. first out in the final.

Gudmund Grønhaug has done the FA of Blodspor 8c in Ekne, which he bolted eleven years ago. Ekne is located two hours south of Flatanger and there are some 130 routes at the spot (topo), half of which were bolted or had FAs by the Norweigian. Five years ago, Adam Ondra tried the vertical route and said it might be an 8c and since then the 43-year-old has gone all in. Adam had been invited to Flatanger by Gudmund, who was one of the pioneers of the giant cave. "Due to rheumatic chronic pain in the knees, hips shoulders, and worst of all, the low back, I need to train something everyday. 3 years ago a mix of events gave me inspiration to train harder and more structured. My book (climbing injuries) was almost finished, we were due to leave the area and move south and I had a lot of pain. I found the inspiration for everyday structured training in this project and the prospect of being able to get out of bed and make breakfast for me and the kids without having to sit down and have a break at least once due to pain. The last two winters I found a method of combining training to reduce pain with performance enhancing training without spending to much time training. “Luckilly” my pain gives me no time to rest and stop training so I train something almost every day. Obviously this pays of! I now have less pain, fever extreme pain periodes and a new (possible) personal high point concerning climbing grades."

After one month of projecting Stephane Hanssens has done Ramon Julian Puigblanue's La Reina Mora, which seems to have been upgraded from 8c to 9a. The Belgian focused on comps as a youngster, then he did some expeditions and now he is back with a focus on sport climbing and World Cup comps. His best results in 2015 were #13 in the Euro Bouldering Championship and #9 in the Imst Lead WC. (c) Guillaume Lion "This is by far, the path which asked me the most efforts. Really happy and what amazing line. Thank you to all the people who helped me in this project."

The big sensational result from the qualification in the first Boulder World Cup 2016, which is taking place in Meiringen in Swizerland, was that Dimitri Sharafutdinov and Anna Stöhr did not make it to the semfinal Top-20. At the same time as seven male climbers made four out of five boulders, half of the field did not do even a single one! Complete qually results In total, 84 male and 59 female participated. The live streaming starts on Saturday with the semifinal 11.00 - 14.00 and the final 18.30 - 20.30.

Tina Hafsaas - Lynx 8A - Vingsand from Thilo Schröter on Vimeo.

B&W Cup #1 /// 2016 from Bloctool on Vimeo.

Kevin Aglae reports on Facebook that he has done the FA of L'Enfumette 9a in St Leger. (c) Jan Novak