31 December 2013

How superior is Adam Ondra?

2013 has been the best year ever for Adam Ondra with two 9b+ and three 9b's, all but one of them first ascents. He has also onsighted his first 9a. Chris Sharma has repeated one 9b+ and Megos has onsighted a 9a, but even so we have probably never seen such a superior #1 in the world, although we are more climbers than ever out on the rock. The number of guys having done 9a, 9a+ and 9b are around 60, 10 and 1 which suggests that there are a great difficulty differences in the upper level. Add to Ondra's extreme current level and superiority the fact that most of his hardest ascents he has bolted and found all the sequences himself and furthermore, he is known for giving very stiff personal grades. What is also a reality is that actually only very few of all his more than 25 FA 9a's and harder have ever been repeated. Finally, Adam won the first WC he tried for three years. Quantifying and understanding how superior Adam is might be done with using high jump centimeters and I suggest the following comparison. 9a = 227 cm 9a+ = 233 cm 9b = 239 cm 9b+ = 245 cm
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