Iziar Martinez has done her fourth 8c, Suma cero in Cuenca. "I went to Cuenca this weekend and my trainer told me I had to try something hard so I tried Suma cero 8c. I thought I could do it and the route was really cool and I did it in six tries." (c) Javi Pec

James Webb, who previously has done five 8C+', has done his 8C #30, Dicktopia in Camp Dick. "The bloc took me two sessions. I climbed it first try on the second day. Most definitely suits my style quite well. Right now I’m back home in South Lake Tahoe, CA and the fall season is just kicking off. I have a lot of projects here so hopefully, we’ll be able to put some down soon!"

"This decision was not an easy one for us, but the health of everyone involved clearly comes first. We consulted with the coaches and also obtained the opinions of the athletes. From our point of view, a posting to Moscow due to travel warnings and restrictions is not responsible. " reports Austria Climbing on Insta. In other words, no Austrians will travel to Moscow to compete in the Euro Championship 20-29 November.

The last male and female from Europe going to the Olympics will be selected in the Moscow event. This means that Jakob Schubert and Jessica Pils are the only Austrians going to Tokyo 2021.

It should be noted that according to the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, a travel warning of the highest level 6 applies to Russia.

If the Moscow Championships are cancelled, Jernej Kruder from Slovenia and Ievgeniia Kazbekova from Ukraine will get the Euro Olympic tickets due to their results in the Combined World Championship last year.

If a boulder is much easier if you are 175 cm tall, then a 165 cm tall guy doing the FA needs to consider this once suggesting the FA grade. It could be the same if a guy with fat fingers can't squeeze in two fingers in a pocket, meaning he has to use just one finger or go for another beta. If it then feels like 8A he might opt for 7C+ or lower. If you are not using climbing shoes it might be hard to understand if it is easier with shoes so no blame on Charles Albert and his 9A proposal on No Kpote only but he has to be careful in the future suggesting 9A's.

Grades are based on the best possible sequence and also for the perfect size of that climb. A dyno where it is (almost) impossible for climbers below 185 cm should not be graded 9A based on how it feels for the 170 cm climbers. That dyno grade should be based on how it feels for the 185 cm guys, which might be 8A.

Martina Demmel has done her tenth 8c in 2020 by the FA of Formiert 8c in Kochel. Interesting is that she started climbin in 2017 when she reached 7a and now the 18-year-old is #2 in the 8a ranking game.

"I've been "Voi miad" after clipping the chains of this old forgotten project/combi (from Markus Meier; thx Toni L. for motivating me to give it a try) at Afrikawand within 4 tries but with knowing some sections pretty well already, which makes the grading even harder;) no possibilities to rest during this 38 moves resistance beast! The direct and more logical version of "Ratzfatz..." Biggest thanks Isi for all the belays including the sending one. More infos on Insta:).

Just barely possible to chalk up a few times which means that it's maybe the one longest continious sequence I've done so far as I normally find some hidden rests to shake out which unfortunately didn't happenend in this one...👐😅"

Federations put in a lot of money and effort in their national teams competing abroad. In 2020, a lot of money were saved for the federations due to all the cancelled competitions. At the same time most athletes have been training with a focus on indoor hoping for the international competition scene to open up soon again. As it stands, I think the federations should begin to also focus on outdoors in order to give their athletes new motivation as we do not know how the scene will look like in 2021.

Hopefully it will be more normal with many international comps for both seniors and juniors but possibly they might not be considered as World Cups or Championships etc as long as all climbers can travel without any restrictions. If this is true, it might be wise for the federations to also start a focus on outdoors especially for the youth as otherwise, they just might loose their motivation being part of a team only training indoors.

Further more, instead of sending few of the best athletes to international comps, it might also be wise for the federations to take some of this money to try to arrange more national competitions. The Austria Federation did, as an example, a great job setting up their summer series in order to give their competition climbers some more local competition to train for and get challenged by. In the long run, it is maybe a good idea for the federations, at least for the youth, to also set up national rock climbing teams?

What is the hardest to achieve, an 8A boulder or an 8b route? Over the years, we have a couple of times published some diagrams trying to compare route and boulder grades. Interesting is that a 6A boulder is possible as hard as 6C = six grades discrepancy. Then the closer we get to 8A, the discrepancy reduces until it starts to increase again and 9A is possibly as hard as a 9c route = six grades discrepancy again.