8B+ (C) by David Firnenburg

David Firnenburg, who was #6 in the last Boulder WC, has done Chris Sharma's Practice of the Wild in Magic Wood giving it a personal 8B+ grade. "If I compare POTW with New Base Line for example I would say they are the same challenge more or less. Though, POTW didn't feel like a real 8C to me. Not like this significant step towards another higher level compared to the other 8B+'s I've done in the past. I really want to be convinced by the difficulty of a climb to call it my first 8C boulder." Last year, the full time psychology University student got the bronze in the Combined World Championship and the 21 year old is going for the Olympics. He also plans to do most of the World Cups in 2017. In the 8a Combined ranking game, the German is #6. "Bouldering and Lead work well. Slowly improving in every area in trainings. I started to train speed as well but need to integrate it more into trainings. My personal best last year was around 8,5 seconds." (c) Eddie Fowke