Ondra and Megos' updated gradings and advanced theory

Adam Ondra made the FA of La Capella in 2011 but was very uncertain if it was 9b or 9a+ and finished his logbook comment with. "Time will tell." Now ten years later and with the recent quick repeats, in the sector, and personal grades by Alex Megos and Jakob Schubert, the Czech has added to his logbook comment. "Update 2021: changed the grade to 9a+."

Alex Megos has later made some grade comments on Insta in regards to his latest quick sends in Siurana. His personal opinion seems to be that La Capella is the hardest and that King Capella is roughly the same grade and that Furia de Jabali is a little bit easier. "All in all, I think it depends so much on the style and whether it suits you or not; it feels almost impossible to grade such short routes."

Furthermore, it seems that La Capella is harder for short climbers and that is probably the reason why the first repeaters, Daniel Woods and Stefano Ghisolfi (both 169 cm), confirmed Ondra's 9b FA suggestion. Then Will Bosi, (176 cm) repeated it and said it was soft and used that as a reference for giving his FAs Furia de Jabali 9b and King Capella 9b+. Alex Megos did the first repeats and then also Jakob Schubert did them rather quickly and suggested downgrades.

Downgradings are basically always based on Time Comparising Grading, i.e. if you send harder graded routes very quickly, it is an indication that they are not that hard. If we go into more advanced grading theory, it is not the consensus that should set the grades. It is instead the climbers that are best opted for the climb that should set the grades. In this case, if we take a very conservative approach and also take the grade inflation into consideration, one possibility is to say that all three routes are 9a+ and actually that Furia de Jabali is a soft one.