Studio Bloc Masters is organized for the third time and is open for both amateurs as well as professional athletes. Names such as Alexey Ruptsov, Jongwon Chon, Jan Hojer, Fanny Gibert and Janja Garnbret are among the participants every year. The prize money is € 10,000 where the winners get 3,000. At the same time it is a charity event where the entire profit goes to Meeting Sun children. "During the qualification we count with around 500 competitors from all over the world. YOU can be one of those trying to challenge 80 qualification problems set through all over our 2000m² sized bouldergym. The level of the boulderroutes will be set from easy to hard, so that anyone can score points!"

Chuck Odette, who did two 8b+' last year, being 61 years old has done Killer Bees 8b in Hurricave. In the Age bonus ranking, the 62 year old is #2 after Adam Ondra. (c) Heidi Baxter "The older I get, the harder they feel…but I’m not giving up yet! It seems like every time I send a route, there’s a small contingent of people who want to downgrade it because I’m so old it must not be that hard. There’s an indisputable, previously downgraded to 14a (8b+) route which suits my strengths that I’ve been saving for an old age ascent, hopefully in 2018. If I can stay healthy, I’ll do it!"

Here is the 8a Top-5 male + female competition climbers in the history. It is based on the number of points achieved, number of WC wins, number of World Championships as well as podiums. The ranking can not be calculated as there has been different of number of World Cups and World Championships. Further more the first Lead World Cup was 1989 and the first Boulder in 1999. The list does also reflect who has been dominating over the years. 1. Jain Kim - Ramon Julian Puigblanque 2. Angela Eiter - Kilian Fischhuber 3. Muriel Sarkany - Jakob Schubert 4. Mina Markovic - Adam Ondra 5. Akiyo Noguchi - Francois Legrand Others that can be mentioned having made a strong mark on the historical competition scene are; Sandrine Levet, Anna Stöhr, Robyn Erbesfield, Liv Sansoz, Maja Vidmar, Dimitri Sharafutdinov, Sean McColl, Jorg Verhoeven, Jerome Meyer, Tomas Mrazek, and Alex Chabot.

Adam Ondracomments his and the world’s first 9a+ flash. The picture by Bernardo Gimenez is from Adam's Instagram. ”Flashing Super Crackinette is definitely a big mental breakthrough for me. 9a+ flash has been a goal of mine for many years now, but the problem is to find a good route. And once you have it, it is a problem to find someone who gives you the perfect beta. And then, the pressure could be way bigger than competing in the finals of World Championships. I had only tried seriously two routes of 9a+ grade in the past - Biographie in 2012 and Seleccion Anal in 2014. Biographie was quite far, Seleccion Anal was very close, but it is definitely not a reference for 9a+ and i honestly think it is more of 9a hard. Then, I pretty much ran out of convenient routes. Then, I was once in St Leger and saw this project. It was a project with 9a question mark. It looked so perfect. A few moths later, Alex Megos finally made the first ascent and gave it 9a+. I knew immediately this could be the goal. Perfect line and reference grade by Alex himself. This trip, I came to St Leger specifically for this trip. And it was a lot of pressure. I had so much doubts if I am strong enough, if I should not postpone that by another year. But then Bernardo was supposed to come for the filming, Quentin Chastagnier was supposed to come to show me all the moves (thanks for that!). At one point, there was no step back. I had to give it a try. And I felt just so strong and confident, but as the end was getting closer, I could feel a bit nervous. The final last hard move was heartbreaking, but in the end, I had a tiny margin and did not let go. The way towards the anchor was free and towards one of my proudest achievements of my carrier.

Magnus Midtbo, #4 in Arco WVH and 8c+ onsight, started Vlogging ten months ago and has now made 110 episodes. It is about his daily life and also showing some extreme training regimes. In the video below he comes clean and talk about social media and how to get attention for the sponsors. He has almost 35 000 subscribers on his Youtube channel and 121 000 followers on his Instagram.

Tom Randall has done La Fuerza de la Gravedad in Vadiello giving it a personal grade of 8b. Last year Carlos Logroño made the FA with the gear pre-placed. (C) Talo Martín In December Tom tried the route for three days with Swedish WC athlete Hannes Puman (19) with no success. Hannes only climbed cracks once days before with Randall as well on a bouldery 7A+ roof-crack in La Pedriza. He also never put a cam before so both considered that could be better with the cams pre-placed. Surprisingly Hannes did it after just check the route for the first two days without any expectations and sending it the last day on his first try leading. Last week, Tom sent it after warm up on the route and sending on his first go placing the gear on lead. Video coming soon. Randall has previously done 15 trad routes between 8b+ and 8c+, Century Crack, and should be considered one of the best crack climbers in the world. He also have a 9a+ trad project, the Crucifix, in USA and plans to go there one month in October. Tom has chatted to Adam about Century Crack and the Crucifix because the fact that Silence has a crack in the middle, seemed very interesting. Surprisingly, Adam said that Century Crack was one of the few hard trad routes that he’d be interested in repeating. Likewise Tom has said that he’s keen to look at the crack beta on Silence as it looks very similar to a lot moves him and Pete Whittaker have done.

Matt Fultz has after 13 8B+' done his first 8C by the FA of The Expanse in Joe's Valley. Last week he won both the qually and semi in the USA bouldering nationals and was #4 in the final. More info at his Instagram (c) Kieran Hadley "It took me about 6 sessions in total. I’ve never competed in a World Cup, but I’m planning on doing Vail and the world championships in Austria this year!" What is interesting is that the the 26 year old has had an almost continuous progress for eight straight years. In the 8a ranking game, the 183 cm and 78 kg, is #7.

Adam Ondra reports on Instagram that he has done the FA of Eagle 4 9b in St. Leger, France. © Bernardo Giménez "Today, it was dry, I felt strong, made through the hard part and fell 5m from the anchor from totally easy terrain. Luckily, I could do it even second time in the late afternoon." Few days ago Adam did Super Crackinette, the first 9a+ flashed ever. In the last 12 months Ondra has done 23 routes from 9a to 9c. In total, there exist 30 established routes 9b or harder. Adam has done 22 of them. The runner up is Chris Sharma with seven 9b's or harder.

It is nice to see how well the grading system works around the globe and that we have a slow but steady grade inflation is just natural. One of the reason for this is the calculation grading that some topo authors as well as websites use. Let us say twelve guys do and report a 9a and then three guys come along suggest 8c+. The calculated grade would still be 9a although it just might be that most of the first repeaters did actually not suggest 9a. Instead they just used the topo grade, as they do not care, or possibly wanted to make the first ascentionists and the sponsors pleased. Other possible reasons for the 8c+ suggestions, might be that a new sequence was found or a hold broke making it easier. In practice, trying to calculate grade, a higher weight should be given to the last suggestions otherwise the multiplication sum just might continue the grade inflation.