28 August 2017

Tomasz Oleksy - Best ever in Combined

Tomasz Oleksy has won five Speed World Cups and two Boulder World Cups. In 2003, he won the Speed and the Boulder World Cup on the same day in Yekaterinburg and got a bronze and silver in the World Championship in Chamonix. During the same year, he won the WC overall in Speed and was #5 in Boulder. The following year the Pole tried Lead once and was #14. In other words, Tomasz Oleksy is the best Combined climber in history and shows that it is possible to perform in all three disciplines. If climbing would have been Olympic 15 years ago, he might have been the mega star with some golds medals around his neck! "Normally I trained Speed after one day of break when I was fresh. The rest of my training I focused on Bouldering training and Lead climbing, two days training and one day rest. In one period I tried to train two times a day but it was too much for me. Outside I was focused for climbing mostly onsight. I was able to climb 8b onsight. In bouldering I was able climb 7C+ onsight and 8B problems quite fast. I never focused on really hard stuff and I did just like two trips per year." (But he has done the FA of Tysiac kotletow 9a, in 2000.) Piotr Kotlarski tells us the extreme story from Malatal when Tomasz recommended his warm up boulder. ""Guys, a great boulder, a mix of coordination and power, I really like it". He'd done it like three times for fun, saying it is around 7C. Then the locals arrived and said he'd done Petting with an Alligator 8A+. Today Tomasz is working as an IFSC route setter and he did the Munich WC and now he is in Innsbruck for the Youth World Championship. "Fortunately this job offers me time for climbing so I am still more less in the game, 8a onsight :))). When I have time we try with my family to go climbing outside as much as possible. I think this is very important for Maja! Maybe my daughter will have chance to finish this Olympic story?" Follow up story with Maja, who did his first 8a this summer, Petit Tom in Céüse, at 9-years-old, soon to come.
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