Ogata Yoshiyuki, Jakob Schubert, Janja Garnbret and Brooke Raboutou won their respective groups in the Boulder qualifications in Innsbruck. Among the male, Japan had six guys in Top-10 and among the girls, they had five in Top-13.

In total, 114 males participated out of which 76 did not make one Top including Jernej Kruder, Sean Bailay (winner in SLC) and Olympian Alberto Gines Lopez.

One reason for the big discrepancy in the results is that the best start first with fresh holds and colder temperature. If you do not have any ranking points, the starting order is randomised so you need some luck to not start among the last.

One possibility to reduce the number of participants could be to only allow two or three athletes per nation that are not ranked. Currently, five climbers per country are allowed to participate.

On the new 8a Games feature, you can predict the top 5 male and female athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Games. You can edit your prediction anytime leading up to the start of the competition. Currently, nearly 85% of the participants agree that Janja will win the gold medal. This is also your chance to outdo Jens with your prediction! :-)

Once the official results are announced, each ranking you predicted correctly will earn you 100 points and one ticket towards the raffle. If you are among the participants with the most points, you will be entered into the raffle for the Adidas grand prize. All participants receive a one-month Vertical-Life Premium voucher, providing you with an extensive digital guidebook library, just in time for a summer road-trip!

The Olympians got all Top-3 in the qualification in Innsbruck and only Petra Klingler #38 and Jongwon Chon #49 had relatively poor results. The biggest positive surprise was Olympian Collin Duffy (17) #6 and Aleksandra Totkova (16) #8. (c) Vladek Zumr

1. Adam Ondra CZE - Janja Garnbret SLO
2. Jakob Schubert AUT- Laura Rogora ITA
3. Alex Megos GER - Brooke Raboutou USA
4. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA - Vita Lukan SLO
4. Domen Skofic SLO - 5. Lucka Rakovec SLO


Noteworthy is that on the second male route, getting 18+ meant you were tied #42 but without the +, you dropped to #70. Complete results

Matt Fultz has done his third 8C+ the last year, Grand Illusion in Little Cottonwood Canyon. During several Insta posts, including videos, he has reported his progress since April 11th, "Might get obsessed with this one 😤".

Already two weeks ago he posted that he had done his 12th session and that he thought it had to wait until this autumn. Then two days ago, "95 degrees today 🥵 doesn’t cool down enough even at midnight. I know I should bail to Colorado and come back for Grand Illusion in the Fall, but I’m too darn stubborn."

His last post commenting having done it. "Grand Ill is pretty much the only problem I’ve tried since early April. It was quite a fight to gain the specific fitness required for this boulder/sport climb hybrid. Pacing, precision, and micro-beta needed to be so dialed in for me. And of course, as usual, the long fight ended in a pretty casual first try of the night burn."

Stephan Schibli, who previously has made seven 9a and harder FAs, has repeated his first 9a, Fingertest in Muotathal. “I tried the route a few years ago. Last summer for the last time, but it was definitely too warm and nothing worked. This year in good conditions I wanted to try the route again, because after a few first ascents of this level, repeating this route had long been on my wish list. In my opinion, some holds were missing in the upper part. I then found a solution a little on the left and was able to score the route the next day in top conditions.”

It seems none of your seven 9a and 9a+ FAs has been repeated? Why is that do you think?
It's not like the routes are in some area where nobody goes. Rather, they are in the classic areas of Central Switzerland. However, the style of the routes probably does not suit many top climbers. Technically difficult climbing on extremely small holds.

It should be mentioned that the 49-year-old also has made the FA of five 8c+, the first in 2001 and the last seven weeks ago. It seems that just one of them have been repeated.

Moritz Welt has done the FA of Star Shopping 9a in Frankenjura, which had been bolted by Werner Thon. In total, the 20-year-old has done 14 9a’s, out of which seven the last year. (c) Lars Decker

”After checking the route for the first time I instantly knew that was the kind of line I was searching for. It's a 25meters high wall with a 10m roof in the middle that has just one pure sequence of holds to climb on. You basically climb some 7c to a no hands ledge, and after some easy approach it's 10 consecutive hard moves through the roof. After that you have some 8a climbing to the top. At the beginning I was struggling a lot with the single moves, but after checking out everything perfectly it went faster than expected. In total it took me 6 sessions.”

A total of 289 athletes are registered to compete in the Innsbruck World Cup. In Bouldering there are 119 males and 96 females in the starting list and in Lead, 108 males and 81 females.

Interesting is that some Olympians like the Mawem brothers and Alexey Rubtsov will only compete in Bouldering and that Rishat Khaibullin will only participate in Lead. Furthermore, Olympian Aleksandra Miroslaw who won Speed in Salt Lake City, will not compete and the same goes for Iuliia Kaplina. Great Britain and China are missing from the starting list meaning Shauna Coxey, YiLing Song and YuFei Pan will not participate.

23/6 Lead qualifications
24/6 Boulder qualifications
25/6 Lead semi and final
26/6 Boulder semi and final

In 2019, Jimmy Webb did the FA of Sleepwalker 8C+. Then in 2021, Daniel Woods started working on a sit start adding a seven moves 8B, creating ROTSW 9A. The 31-year-old has the best ticklist in the world and it took him 70+ days to do his first 9A, out of which the last 16 days, he was alone camping in the canyon.

Zhao Lei, Team Manager of Chinese Climbing Team, reports with a video on Insta that a 16-year-old has unofficially set a new Speed record - 5.106.