Amazing shoe analyses by Ondra

Comparing the style of Jongwon Chon, standing on just part of his toes and failing and missing the final, with Alexey Rubtsov, the winner, doing the friction dependent move using more sole, just confirms what Ondra said during the La Sportiva media day. This was reported just two days ago. "Sometimes there are slabs where you just stand on volumes, and you could actually climb them in normal sneakers. These boulders are about putting as much rubber on as possible and what is most important is how flexible you are in the foot. He also said that for him it is hard to understand why some of the top climbers on this type of boulder use the same very tight shoes as you would for standing on micros on an overhang." In fact, Ondra actually used Jongwon Chon as an example of a boulderer that might be using too tight of shoes meaning he gets less sole on these just friction dependent volumes. He was critical towards too much of this type of route setting as it mainly just measures how flexible you are in the ankle. In practice, Ondra meant that it would have been an advantage for especially Chon but also others to bring an over sized shoe to the comps, using for such slab volume problems, and start training ankle flexibility.