Alex Megos has some kind of new record doing an 8c or harder in seven days in a row during his "Old school classics" tour around Switzerland. Here is his amazing tick list including also an eigtht day, in a row, going to Arco. Patrick Matros, one of Megos' coaches, accompanied him on the marathon tour where it also rained most of the days. "It was important for Alex to meet some of the 1st ascenders like Beat Kammerlander and Eric Talmadge. His aim was, to repeat some of the hard ultraclassics of Switzerland. Not so much to throw down every hard route there, despite his long list." Day 1. Speed 8c+ (2nd Go) 2. Speed Integral 9a (6th Go) 3. Ravage 8c. Enfant de Boheme 8c, L'appel de la foret 8c: (All 2nd Go) 4. Im Reich des Shogun 9a (3rd Go) Thomas Ballenberger 5. Les temps difficiles 8c+, Rammstein 8c, two 8b+': (All 2nd Go) 6. Coup de Grace 9a (2nd Go) 7. Deus Irae 8c+ (2nd Go) The eighth day in a row, Alex drove to Arco and had a gym session with Stefano Ghisolfi and later he did Sid Lives 9a and Bucking Bronco 8c+.

Alex Puccio, who just won Arco Rock Master for the fourth time in a row, has done her third 8B+ boulder, New Base Line in Magic Wood. "So psyched! Awesome boulder!" Her hard core grade pyramid is perfect and the runner up in the world championship 2014, is superior among the female outdoors. It looks like she soon is ready for an 8C. Alex is #1 in the female ranking game which she has been almost straight for six years, in spite of some bad injuries.

Beside the first day, the Boulders were in general great in the Youth World Championship in Innsbruck. Here chief route setter Jacky Godoffe and Jorg Verhoeven talk about the problems they faced.

Austria Climbing has presented the provisional standings in the Combined event. The Top-6 Juniors and Youth B will compete one more round on Saturday to see how will get the Combined medals. For Youth A, the Top-20 will participate competing for the Top-13 who will qualify to the Youth Olympics in Argentina in 2018. Claire Buhrfeind, competing in Juniors, has the best Combined overall results winning the Boulder and also winning in Speed, among the girls competing in Combined. Narasaki Meichi, also in Juniors, has the second best result being #2 and #5.

Tendon has got a long quote from Adam Ondra after he has established the world's first 9c and here is part of it. (c) Pavel Blazek "„In the morning it felt like every other day on the Project. It was hot, but the air was crystal clear and dry. But I felt very little pressure and lot of psyche. Key ingredients for sending the world's first 9c. At the end of the route when I knew I did it, I had one of the strangest emotions ever. I clipped the anchor and I could not even scream. All I could do was just hang in the rope, feeling tears in my eyes. It was too much joy, relief and excitement all mixed together... Months and months of my life summed up in 20 minutes. So much time and effort in something so short but intense as hell. Every minute spent in Norway, every move in the gym was totally worth it. This route never really turned into a nightmare, despite the time I spent on the route. It was a fun process, and it was even more fun to finish it off.” Adam Ondra Instagram and AdamOndra.com Adam has not yet named the route though he has used the working title Project Hard on many occasions in the past. He bolted the route in 2013 and focused on it last year and also this year’s entire season. He made seven trips to Norway and in total spent months there. Also he trained specifically for the project since the beginning of this year and worked closely with a physiotherapist Klaus Isele who helped him to prepare for the very specific moves.

Planet Mountain has got a full length interview with Adam Ondra. "For me it is definitely the most important achievement in my climbing career. It’s what I value the most, the route I’ve put the most effort in, where I’ve had to dig the deepest. Now that it’s finally come through it’s just incredible. An experience which is very rare and intense." So Adam (24), who has been appointed the 8a Climber of the year continuously since he was 17, values this higher than his other extreme achievements in all climbing disciplines , like; (c) Pavel Blazek 1. The Dawn Wall = Marathon 8 days climbing 2. Double World Champion in 2016 = Plastic power and power endurance 3. Change 9b+ in 2010 = Mental frustration 4. 9a onsight etc etc = Tactical skill 5. 8B+ flash Jade = Power

The Guardian has made a long nice interview (with great pics from (c) Pavel Blazek) where Adam among other things say; "When I did this climb I did not feel it was at my absolute limit. I can imagine climbing a harder route. I think I can climb more at this grade one day and potentially harder.” Emontana has also done a full length camera including the perspective from Adam's girlfriend, Iva Vejmolová, who did belay him during the 20 minutes. "In this moment I personally started to cry. (laughing) I knew that if he didn’t screw up, then he was going to send it. For me, It was so difficult, to wait and see what’s going to happen next."

The Youth A Speed World Champions 2017 are Aleksandra Kalucka Polen and Sergey Rukin Russia. In total, Russia got one of each medal and also a #3 result. Complete results and Video Highlights Interesting to see the great progress since the Youth World Championships 2016. In order to qualify to Top-16 you had to do 11.96 respectively 8.53. This year 10.66 respectively 7.82 were needed. The best Combined female result after two disciplines is Luiza Emeleva from Russia #2 in Boulder and #13 in Speed. Among the boys Philip Shenk from Russia won the Boulder and was #43 in Speed and Keita Dohi from Japan #2 in Boulder and #26 in Speed. The Top-20 qualifies for the last Combined event on Sunday where Top-13 qualifies to Youth Olympics in Argentina 2017.