Adam Ondra stopped by Höllental, on his way back from Slovenia, and onsighted four routes included Bernie Fiedler's 9a, Blut und Honig. Ondra, who is the top climber giving most personal grades, thought the 45 m endurance was 8c+ or even 8c. "A route which is very hard to grade. It is long but has many good rests, and the real difficulty is the low percentage crux way low down." More info on his Insta now with 503' followers.

Adam Ondra, who topped both qually routes, climbed two respectively four moves higher than Jakob Schubert and Kai Harada. Japan did not send their best team, anyhow getting three in the Top-9. Among the female, the semi was a Slovenia, Korea and Japan affair getting all Top-12 places but Jessica Pilz and Anak Verhoeven tied at #7. The big surprise was that Janja Garnbret was #13 with four Slovenians ahead of her. The final start 17.30. Complete results

In her fourth Lead World Cup, Chaehyon Seo from Korea got her third victory. This means that if the 15-year-old is at least #8 in one of the two last World Cups, she will be the sensational overall winner. Her dilemma is that she has not participated in two Bouldering events, meaning her only chance to qualify to Tokyo 2020, will be the Asian Combined Championship. Back to Kranj, once again poor route setting as the four shortest fell in the same move and the Top-4 did also fell in the same sequence. Nobody reached the last one-third of the route. It should be mentioned that in the semi, ten out of the eleven first reached just two different holds. 1. Chaehyon Seo (15) KOR (c) Eddie Fowke 2. Jessica Pilz AUT 3. Lucka Rakovec SLO Complete results

Adam Ondra was unsure if he should even compete in Kranj but luckily he did creating the perfect show topping out in great style. Passing his opponents' high point he twice waved to the spectators wanting them to cheer more. (c) Eddie Fowke "I like this event way too much and I just wanted to go here and climb without pressure and it paid off. It felt great and the audience was the best I have ever remembered." 1. Adam Ondra CZE 2. Kai Harada JPN 3. Alberto Gines Lopez ESP Complete results

The picture is not clear at all as it is a print screen from the first crux move in the final where all the last three struggled due to possibly deteriorating conditions on the sloper. Adam actually put his thumb on top of his pointer as you normally do on a crimper. With the pressure of the thump it seemed he created more pressure and cruised the same move Jakob Schubert could not do. Have not seen this thumb-over-pointer on a slooper before so possibly this technique should be given a new name. Any takers?

Only one out of the Top-5 male ranked did participate in Kranj. After four competitions, Adam Ondra leads although he has just participated in two events, which he has won both. In regards Domen Skopfic, he has said he instead wants to enjoy outdoors being in Rodellar at the moment. Add to the list that Tomoa Narasaki did skip Kranj as well. Noteworthy is also that only four out of the top-10 in the Combined ranking did participate. Complete results Among the women, it is better but anyhow only two out of the Top-4 did participate. Furthermore, only two out of the seven qualified to Tokyo did choose to participate in Kranj. In practice, this means that, although just one Speed as well as two Lead events, remain for the Overall Combined, it is still an open affair as it just might be easier to get good results with many of the best absent. Ondra has said that he just might skip the last two Lead World Cups. It will be very interesting to see if he bothers to win the Lead WC in 2019. Possibly he will just do the next one and hope this is good enough for securing the title.

It might be that in Tokyo 2020, 15 of the best male Lead & Boulder athletes will compete together with five several levels below. Already now, we have Rishat Khaibullin and Ludovico Fossoli qualified, out of which the latter will struggle to get one zone in Bouldering. The other three, several levels below in Lead and Bouldering could be the African respective the Ocean Champions and Bassa Mawem*. Among the female, it is also likely that three Speed specialists; Aleksandra Miroslaw, Di Niu* and Anouck Jaubert* as well as the African and Ocean representative, will take the five last positions with a wide marginal in Lead and Bouldering. This will create problems for the route setters and especially in Bouldering, this will be hard to solve. Creating separation among the weakest means it will be too easy for the best. It might be that five will end up with zero zones and 18 as their multiplicator, alternatively getting one zone and you are #16. One solution to solve this delicate problem is to use two zones in the Olympics. It should be mentioned that Khaibullin is reasonably strong especially in bouldering. Furthermore, in theory, there could be from 2 - 6 very good Speed climbers in Tokyo but most likely 5.

Three weeks ago, Romain Schieber, did fell in the 30m extension of El ordre dels factors + El super mon in Sant Miquel del Fai, which starts with a 10m 8B boulder traverse followed by a 20m 8c making it a soft 9a. In the end, it took him another six days to the 60 m solid 9a. "After 10 000 hours of hard training, after 5 years dreaming about it every single night, after 75 long minutes fighting on the route, he dream come true and I could do a solid 9a." In his 8a comment he also listed 82 names who had helped me in some way. As it has been a long process you can understand as it took him seven years just to do the starting boulder, two months ago. "The last weeks were very hard actually... after falling so high on a so long route it has been hard to keep calm and positive. It was really a mental game and most of the time these three last weeks I could not fight because of the pressure. The day before sending I fell on the very first hard move. So I decided just to focus on the moment and on enjoying the climbing! That strategy worked perfectly!"

Isabelle Faus, who previoulsy has donethree 8B+', has done her 37th 8A+, Hiding in the shadows in Rocklands. "Hard hard for me.. not sure of the grade... used the crimpy method." In the 8a ranking game she is #1, having done twelve boulders 8A+ to 8B+ during the last 12 months.

Updated results from the qualifications and here a video with the highlights.