Alex Megos Olympic interview

Alex Megos won the Combined qualification after actually having being on top in both Lead and Boulder. Unfortunately he got an rupture on his pinkie in the final but nevertheless he got his Olympic ticket. Quite extra ordinary results as he has just been competing for two years after having taken a five year break after a successful junior competition career. As a matter of a fact, all his stats also including being the first to onsight a 9a are indeed extra ordinary. 2017: 2 + 2 comps in Boulder and Lead; 7 - 2 - 8 - 2 2018: Winning a Lead World Cup and #3 in Innsbruck WCH As he has no yet focused so much on Speed and set a couple personal best in Hachioji (7.57), it is likely he will soon go below seven seconds and in a years time below 6.5 seconds. 8a is currently having the 26 year old German as runner up after Tomoa Narasaki to win gold in Tokyo. Vladek Zumr How did you prepare yourself for Hachioji? I think the best preparation I did was to compete in the world cups this year. I still don't have very much comp experience so doing the whole bouldering season plus the three lead world cups before world championships was a good preparation for me. Of course additionally to that I mostly trained in the gym, I did a lot more comp style bouldering and I tried to climb on the speed wall whenever I had the chance to. Together with my two coaches Patrick and Dicki we analyzed my biggest weaknesses in the comps and worked on those. How was it to take part in so many comps over such a long time? Doing the whole bouldering season this year was a new experience for me. I realized that different countries and different climate conditions do affect the performance on plastic a lot more than expected. In general it was cool participating in a lot more comps this year as it gave me the opportunity to get more into competing and gain some experience. I could figure out lots of things which might help me in competitions to come. How was it to compete in Hachioji over so many days? As I'm used to climbing and training a lot of days in a row it was physically not too tiring to compete multiple days in a row. I as well don't tend to have problems with super thin skin so bleeding tips were not an issue for me. Mentally on the other hand it is tough to be competing for such a long time and my the end of the comp I felt exhausted and tired although I didn't have the impression that I climbed a lot. What happened suddenly winning that boulder Combined qualification? To be very honest I don't really know what happened there. After the bouldering world cups I knew I was capable of doing well in bouldering comps but up to that point I felt like I was never really able to reach my potential in bouldering. At the combined qualification I finally was able to perform well. What does it mean to have qualified to the Olympics also from a training and competing perspective? Of course being qualified for the Olympics was a huge relief for me and something I didn't really expect to happen already at the world championships. Being qualified as well means that I'll keep my focus on comps for another year to prepare for the Olympics. How many speed sessions did you do before Hachioji? I didn't count my speed sessions before Hachioji but I did compete in 4 speed world cups this year and between the world cup in Briançon and the world championships in Hachioji I did 5 speed sessions. What is it you like the most being part of the competition circuit? I like most that I get to meet so many cool people at the comps and spend time with them. It's not easy to meet when you live all across the globe so the comps are the opportunity!