The Olympic qualification will be at focus during 2019. Many of the best athletes like Adam Ondra will most likely reduce their climbing on rock and instead replace it with competition training including Speed. During the last years, Japan has started to dominate and that goes especially on the bouldering scene. The dilemma in 2019 is that it is all about Combination and only the best male and female Japanese in the World Champion in Tokyo are guaranteed a position, as long as they are Top-6. This means that the overall World Cup is not so important for the best Japanese so they might cherry pick which comps to go for. This in fact opens up for specialist, who is not going for Tokyo, to win the overall World Cups, especially among the male. However, in general most likely to trend with more Japanese domination will increase in 2019. When it comes to route climbing, there will most likely be a stagnation, after the record year 2018, as most of the best focus on Tokyo. In regards bouldering, 2018 was also a record year and 2019 has indeed strengthen this progress trend with Charles Albert doing a 9A FA barefoot and Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods and Nalle Hukkataival doing 8C+. Charles and Jimmy are working on two other possibly 9A projects in Fontainebleau and Daniel is going for Burden of Dreams 9A this spring. In total, there will probably be around ten guys doing at least one 8C+ or harder in 2019. At the same time, the female level continues to raise and possibly ten girls, including 13 year old Oriane Bertone, just might do 8B+ or harder.

Christof Rauch has done Toni Lamprect's Bokassa's Frigde - Assassin Monkey and Man in Kochel giving it a personal 8C grade. Lamprect video shows it is like an elimination where the left of from the dihedral is not allowed to use. FA article form 2009. "Booom! Second ascent, ten years after Toni made the FA! Sick fridge with perfect compression moves. Thanks to Toni and the crew for the support! Took me quite a few sessions. Last year I injured my left biceps/shoulder on it and it took a lot of time to get fully recovered. "

Daniel Woods reports on Insta that Nalle Hukkataival has done the third ascent Sleepwalker 8C+ in Red Rocks. The FA was done by Jimmy Webb, video, in December and last week Daniel Woods did the second ascent. Now Daniel is working on the sitstart link up to the seven moves 8C+, where the easiest is 7C.

We have previously said that standing longjump is a good measurement to check the Speed climbing potential. The Norwegian coach Reino Horak has mentioned that 2.80 cm could be an indication if you could go sub 7 seconds. Another method to value your potential is to just focus on the first five moves (4 using the Narasaki skip) and measure your time. The 5.60 world record time had a split time of some 1.5 sec. Narasaki reaches his fourth move after some 1.8 sec when he does sub 7 seconds. So instead of training 20 sessions to check the natural talent for the full 15 meter Speed climbing having a problem with the sequence etc, it might be better to just spend five sessions focusing on the first five moves. If you can not get close to 2.0 seconds, it might be very hard to get below eight seconds. However, it should be mentioned that the best female, who have done 7.32 seconds, reach move five after some 2.3 seconds. In other words, they loose much more time in the start in comparison of the finish. One explanation for this is that it is better to be taller and more explosive in the start compared with the finish.

Isabelle Faus did Delusion of Grandeur 8B in Chironico last spring, commenting it might have been one of her best day of climbing. "Wow! So psyched, super classic boulder. Not my style at all....slopers.. really big crux move that is my full extension. Top out is high and committing and satisfying... I was scared on the slab! Not usually a FFA type of girl... but I think I'm the first girl to do this, and its one of the most classic boulders in Ticino so thats kinda cool. Went up and the electric ant (the new start) right after! Probably one of my best days of climbing!" Mellow has now released the uncut video.

ISPO Munich: "The leading trade fair for sports professionals!" have for many years given out awards to the best innovations in the Outdoor industry. In the sport climbing segment, only Vertical-Life won awards in 2019 through their Training-Log and Smart Quickdraw. (The links and the motivations from the jury is not yet released.) ISPO runs 3/2 - 6/2 and there will for the first time be a special Indoor Climbing Hub with many lectures and on Sunday at 17.00, Vertical-Life host a party. In 2014, Vertical-Life got their first award for their Zlagboard and last year they won prices for their Smart scorecard and Rock Selfie. In total, they have now received nine trade fair awards.

2019 is a unique year in competition climbing due to the Olympic selection. The Top-7 in the Combined WCH will qualify to Tokyo and then the Top-20 in the Overall Combined WC ranking will fight over 6 spots in a special event. The Overall Combined is based on the two best results in each discipline which are multiplied. In practice this means that, most probably, the best athletes will be selective which comps to go for. As soon as they have qualified through the WCH or are sure to qualify to the special event they will skips some comps and instead focus on training. Add to that that the Japan Combined Championship, which will decide who will compete in the WCH, will be in late May. Here is a list which comps most probably will have the weakest starting list. Possibly it could be strategic for the guys just below the best to skip some comps and instead focus on the three listed below, beside the WCH and the special event. 7/6 Vail USA Bouldering 19/10 Xiamen China Lead/Speed 26/10 Inzai Japan Lead 11-22/8 Japan World Championship 28/11 - 1/12 Toulouse France The consequence of this is also that, most probably, it will be easier than ever to win or get a good result in especially the Lead World Cup 2019. The reasons for this are that the best will not do all WCs and also that they will not be optimized for Lead in 2019 as most of the best will train all three disciplines simultaneously. It might be that it will be more or less the same situation in 2020 as most of the best will focus training all three disciplines and skip some World Cups. Later, either climbing will have medals in three disciplines or we will be out of the Olympics and then it will be much harder to win the World Cup for sure. Add to that the trend of increasing domination from Japan who just might have five in Top-10 in all categories but Speed in the future.