Lorenzi: Soudain Seul felt harder than Alphane

Simon Lorenzi, who made the FA of Soudain seul (9A) in 2021 after some 25 sessions, needed some 20 sessions to send Alphane (9A). "Soudain Seul was harder to send for me. But as you know climbing is a matter of style." (c) Gilles Charlier

It should be mentioned that Simon personally hesitated to give Soudain Seul 8C+ or 9A but as some of the others who tried it thought 9A, the Belgian concluded that 9A was probably the appropriate grade.

The sending process of Alphane could probably have been quicker as he also had to tackle injury and skin problems as well as bad conditions. After he did it in two parts in August after just five sessions, he got a shoulder injury that made it impossible to fully extend his arm for a month. Then he injured his left index finger meaning that he only focused on the second half while working on it in November. Then in December, he made one more trip and was close to sending but got skin problems.

"It was a roller coaster because I opened my right index finger at my first attempt of the day. I had this problem 10 days ago and didn't find a solution to try with tape. Finally, I put one piece of tape in a strange way and I sent it on my first try with the tape. I went from being depressed about my skin to sending in like 5 min."

So if you had failed on that attempt, it was over for that session?
Yes, if I had missed it, it was over for a few days because I was not convinced of my taping technique ahaha :)

What made the trick in the end for sending it?
The trick for me was finding all the good betas and for that, I needed to put tries from the start because when you're pumped from the beginning it's easier to say if the beta is good or not.

Any thoughts on the direct version of Alphane?
It looks like one of the hardest thing I've seen but I didn't try so I'll be back.

Any other projects that you are keen to do?
For sure, there are still 3 amazing looking 9a's to be repeated 😁 And many other 8C+ or 8C like Floatin, Grande illusion, United, Box therapy, Lucid dreaming,... At the moment there is no project that I know that I'm pretty psyched for in Font. But there is a ton of easiest stuff that I really want to do there.

What is next and what about Paris 2024?
From today, the next goal is to be selected for 2024. I'll go check the hard stuff that I want to do after 2024 for sure 🙂