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Comments from his father Vladimir from last year when Théo had done his first 8c.

"Theo started climbing more regularly when he was 8 (he was climbing before, but quite irregularly). His progression was quite interesting: it took him a few months of projecting to send his first 6b+ (on top rope) and then he progressed from 6b+ to 8b in less than a year and a half. His training is a bit chaotic and highly dependent on motivation, time of the year and availability of other more fun activities (such as mountain biking, skiing or building a shack in the garden). At the beginning of the lockdown he trained a lot at our small home bouldering wall but then he lost motivation and did not train for a month.

From the dad's perspective, there are two key takeaways from the experience of belaying, watching, encouraging, counselling, supporting and occasionally arguing with Theo about beta: (1) adult grades are a bit of a nonsense when it comes to kids - two of the hardest moves on the route for Theo are among the easiest for adults - so not worth getting too excited about grades (especially when you are under 1m40); (2) even if fear, frustration and failure are part of the game, climbing kids of the world, enjoy every moment of climbing, projecting, trying hard, sending and try to have fun, and confidence - the future belongs to you."

Jonathan Flor reports on Insta that he has done Chilam Balam 9a+/b in Villanueva del Rosario.(c) Carlos Padilla

The 80 meters super steep route was put up by Barnabé Fernandez in 2003 as a 9b+. This created controversies as even 9b had not been confirmed before and Alex Huber did officially question the grade. Furthermore, as Fernandez could not name his belayer or was not interested to talk about his ascent with the Spanish media, it was not considered legitimate for many years.

Adam Ondra did the first repeat and suggested a downgrade to 9b. Later it has been repeated by five more guys with 9a+/b as the consensus grade. Jonathan Flor has previously done some 55 routes 8c+/9a or harder which puts him as #7 on that list.

Will Bosi has made the FA of the long standing project, Brandenburg Gate (9a+) at Raven Tor. “The climb is very similar to Hubble in a sense but the sequence of moves are a lot more complex and technically demanding. I was stuck for a while on the lower section but once I was able to unlock a sequence, the route came together really quickly for me”.

Overall, it took Will eight sessions to unlock the sequence on Brandenburg and 7 redpoint attempts to finally complete the chains. The route was widely assumed to be graded 9b due to its perceived difficulty and being an open project on such a popular sport climbing destination however Bosi settled on 9a+.

“My view is that Brandenburg was a soft end 9a+, in comparison to Mutation which I regard as solid 9a+. The climbing was harder than other 9a’s I have done in the past but not by a large degree so I feel it just about deserves 9a+. However, again I look forward to seeing the route get more ascents so the grade can settle one way or the other”.

The ascent is another milestone in a breakout year for Bosi on rock where he has climbed 9b+ and claimed multiple first ascents in Spain, rapid ascents of hard boulders out in Switzerland alongside his recent exploits at Raven Tor which places him at the vanguard of the new generation of strong British talent and alongside the true elite of world sport climbing.

Back in the days, I have personally seen and heard about many top-climbers repeating routes with 3 to 11 pre-clipped carabiners. The rationale behind this related mainly to that it was possible to downclimb from the position, that others had done the same or it was due to safety reasons. This made me publish pre-clipping ethics suggesting that one quickdraw pre-clipped is OK if it is for safety reasons. Having two or three pre-clipped, although due to safety reasons, means ethical dilemma = yellow card.

The big controversy is created once the repeaters do not use the same pre-clipping FA ethics and it goes beyond the "two or three, although due to safety reasons". Then they have not redpointed it but instead done a valid five pre-clipped ascent. It is also important to say that any climber can make an ascent in any way they want as long as they are open with how they did it.

When it comes to down climbing ethics in order to have pre-clipped carabiners I am OK with that as long as you do not untie from the rope, and if you fall, you have to do the down climbing again. I have personally seen a hardcore climber do a route with three pre-clipped. Later, he started to project the downclimb of it and realised that it was possible including a jump, meaning he claimed the redpoint. This might seem utterly stupid but back in the days, prior to the published pre-clipping ethics and also that it was discussed a lot on 8a, it was quite common.

8a will not start name-dropping guys that have created and are using the pre-clipping inflation but I would like to encourage climbers to go for the full redpoint challenge whatever that means. Even if the local community or some top climbers have created some "special inflated pre-clipping ethics" for specific routes, a redpoint ascent should respect the FA ethics and not systematically push or go beyond, "two or three pre-clipped, although due to safety reasons."

Overall, the pre-clipping inflation obviously also partly could explain why there is grade inflation. It is easier to repeat a route if you have five pre-clipped compared to the FA which most probably had fewer pre-clipped quickdraws. It should be noted that when it comes to bouldering, we could also say that crash pad inflation also exist. As an example, most of the FAs in Fontainebleau have been done without starting on top of a crash pad. At the same time, it is quite common that once shorter boulderers do not reach the normal starting holds, they start on top of stacked crash pads.

In the same way, as with pre-clipping on routes, you can of course start a boulder with as many crash pads stacked as you want as long as you are open with how you did it. However, possibly you should give your multiple stacking pad variation a new name and grade?