Only one out of the Top-5 male ranked did participate in Kranj. After four competitions, Adam Ondra leads although he has just participated in two events, which he has won both. In regards Domen Skopfic, he has said he instead wants to enjoy outdoors being in Rodellar at the moment. Add to the list that Tomoa Narasaki did skip Kranj as well. Noteworthy is also that only four out of the top-10 in the Combined ranking did participate. Complete results Among the women, it is better but anyhow only two out of the Top-4 did participate. Furthermore, only two out of the seven qualified to Tokyo did choose to participate in Kranj. In practice, this means that, although just one Speed as well as two Lead events, remain for the Overall Combined, it is still an open affair as it just might be easier to get good results with many of the best absent. Ondra has said that he just might skip the last two Lead World Cups. It will be very interesting to see if he bothers to win the Lead WC in 2019. Possibly he will just do the next one and hope this is good enough for securing the title.

It might be that in Tokyo 2020, 15 of the best male Lead & Boulder athletes will compete together with five several levels below. Already now, we have Rishat Khaibullin and Ludovico Fossoli qualified, out of which the latter will struggle to get one zone in Bouldering. The other three, several levels below in Lead and Bouldering could be the African respective the Ocean Champions and Bassa Mawem*. Among the female, it is also likely that three Speed specialists; Aleksandra Miroslaw, Di Niu* and Anouck Jaubert* as well as the African and Ocean representative, will take the five last positions with a wide marginal in Lead and Bouldering. This will create problems for the route setters and especially in Bouldering, this will be hard to solve. Creating separation among the weakest means it will be too easy for the best. It might be that five will end up with zero zones and 18 as their multiplicator, alternatively getting one zone and you are #16. One solution to solve this delicate problem is to use two zones in the Olympics. It should be mentioned that Khaibullin is reasonably strong especially in bouldering. Furthermore, in theory, there could be from 2 - 6 very good Speed climbers in Tokyo but most likely 5.

Three weeks ago, Romain Schieber, did fell in the 30m extension of El ordre dels factors + El super mon in Sant Miquel del Fai, which starts with a 10m 8B boulder traverse followed by a 20m 8c making it a soft 9a. In the end, it took him another six days to the 60 m solid 9a. "After 10 000 hours of hard training, after 5 years dreaming about it every single night, after 75 long minutes fighting on the route, he dream come true and I could do a solid 9a." In his 8a comment he also listed 82 names who had helped me in some way. As it has been a long process you can understand as it took him seven years just to do the starting boulder, two months ago. "The last weeks were very hard actually... after falling so high on a so long route it has been hard to keep calm and positive. It was really a mental game and most of the time these three last weeks I could not fight because of the pressure. The day before sending I fell on the very first hard move. So I decided just to focus on the moment and on enjoying the climbing! That strategy worked perfectly!"

Isabelle Faus, who previoulsy has donethree 8B+', has done her 37th 8A+, Hiding in the shadows in Rocklands. "Hard hard for me.. not sure of the grade... used the crimpy method." In the 8a ranking game she is #1, having done twelve boulders 8A+ to 8B+ during the last 12 months.

Updated results from the qualifications and here a video with the highlights.

The next possibility to make it to Tokyo 2020, is to make it to the Top-20 overall in the Combined ranking excluding the ones that already made it in Hachioji. Further more, most probably no Japanese will be allowed to compete as it is not a qualifying event for them. In practice, this means that being around Top-30 to 35 should be good enough. With just one Speed event and three Lead events remaining, one could speculate that a total score of around 6 million for the female and 12 million for the male would be good enough to make it to Toulouse. From the current overall rankings we can see that 10 million are needed for the female and 25 million for the male. What makes it impossible to come up with a real figure is that we do not know; A. how many of the already qualified in Hachioji, B. the ones already below 1 million, C. the once without a chance will participate in the last events. It has already been a long season and two more European Championships are coming up. It just might be that we will see relatively few Combined climbers participating in the last events in China and Japan. The good news is of course, on the other hand, that the Speed event in Xiamen will be like a free ticket to Toulouse. It should be mentioned that the last Boulder event in Vail was already almost like a free ticket to Toulouse that were lost for many. The number of Combined participants in this event were around half of the other Boulder World Cups. To sum up, scoring 100 * 100 * 400 or = 4 million for a Boulder/Lead specialist. A Speed specialist will get the same scoring by 1 000 * 1 000 * 4. This means that it is predicted that at least 2 + 2 Speed specialist will make it to Toulouse.

Jorge Diaz-Rullo, who this summer has done his first three 9b's, has done his seventh 9a+, Seta ibérica in Cuenca. "Brutal connection! I wanted to do it after a couple of tries quite close! Now for the ones that remain! The 19-year-old is the superior 8a ranking leader. (c) Javi Pec

Toru Nakajima, who previously has done five famous 8C', has free-soloed a route just to the left of the 500 Shomyo waterfalls. Big parts of the route were totally wet and in some sequences, he actually climbed in the waterfall! 8a has a policy to not publish free-solos as we do not want to promote such activities. However, Toru's ascent goes in the same category as Alex Honnold's Freerider.

Moritz Welt, who did his first 9a two years ago, has done his fourth, Styleboys in Frankenjura. "Surprise ascent - 3 more tries after Sever and Sick Boy - perfect endurance linkup. Two days later the 18-year-old did his sixth 8B+, Urlaub fürs Gehirn also in Frankenjura. "Second ascent. Fabi's Masterpiece!" In the Combined ranking game, the young German is #2. The picture by Lars Decker is from a project Moritz has been working on for three weeks. It is an old Frankenjura line so it should be rather hard which possibly has to wait until spring as he travels to Spain on Thursday.

Adam Ondra, who will compete in Kranj this weekend, has done his 12th 8C, Ghost Rider in Moravský kras. "2nd ascent after Martin Stranik. Amazing problem, lower start is waiting..."