"It is literally impossible to climb in a way that you are 100 % sure that you never step on a bolt, because then you would not be in the flow and you would never be climbing efficiently." Based on this and that also Shauna Coxsey stepped on a bolt, it is about time that IFSC try to deal with the issue so it can not be such anti climax in Tokyo? Further more, should it be possible to make appeals? Why not just have a referee and possibly a "VAR" room who together takes the decisions without interfering with the coaches.

One male and one female in Tokyo 2020 was planned to go to a Tripartite invitation place. It is just nations with eight or less individual participates in the last two Olympics games that can get such an invitation. Further more, in order to get a Tripartite invitation you need to take part in the Combined World Championship. Checking the Combined results in Hachioji, no athlete from the mentioned countries took part meaning the Tripartite Olympic ticket will be reallocated to the next best, not yet qualified, in Hachioji. The selection will be after the results in three different types of competitions that have appointed 18 invitations. As there is a max two country quota there are several that could get the "tripartite" reallocation. As it stands, Yannick Flohé and Anouck Jaubert have the first chance. However, if Jan Hojer from Germany as well as Julia Chanourdie and Fanny Gibert, fill their country quota, it will go to Nathaniel Coleman and Mia Krampl. In theory, as also Mia or another female from Slovenia qualifies, we might have to go down to Di Niu #15 in Hachioji.

Allison Vest, fresh from Hachioji where she was #47 in Boulder and #48 in Lead, has done her first 8B, Terminator Squamish after a total of some 7 or 8 sessions. (c) Jake Scharfman. What is next? Any Olympic dream? My sights are already set on the next World Cup season. Ready for comps to start again. Most of my time is spent in the gym training for competitions so my opportunities to get outside are few and far between :)

Number One direkt 7b+ is located in the “Graue Wand” sector of the ‘Schleierwasserfall’ waterfall climbing area. The 30-metre long sports climbing route runs along a south-facing limestone rock face. The challenging route on the slightly overhanging rock requires nimble footwork in the lower section with some far reaches and large holds, as well as smaller finger holes in the upper part of the climb. The climb is surrounded by a beautiful mountain panorama with the spectacular ‘Schleierwasserfall’ waterfall right next door. The climbing area is located in the Wilder Kaiser Mountain Range. All these characteristics contributed to "Number One direkt" being voted one of the Great Lines at Climbers Paradise Tirol by a panel of experts.

In the qualification and in the semi, the number one prio is to select the Top-20 respectively the Top-6. It is of less importance to challenge the very best. This should mean that the very best outcome would be that four (3) boulders are needed to top in order to make it through. If more than 20 (6) tops all five (4), most would say that the boulders were too easy. Looking at the stats in Arco, we can say that the boulder setters did score a better success rate in comparison to in Hachioji. On the other hand, out of the 12 sets of qualification and semi set of boulders, none were too easy but possibly 3 - 6 sets were too hard. As a matter of a fact, checking IFSC stats the last 10 years, it is the same, never too easy but quite often too hard. In order to create better qualification and semi boulder settings, IFSC should inform the setters how many tops are ideal to advance respectively how many percentage tops are wanted.

Laura Rogora, who the last week was #19 and #20 in boulder and Lead in Hachioji, did win also Boulder in Arco. This mean she won the Combined with 1 - 1 - 4 ahead of Natalia Grossman 3 - 2 - 2. 00: Laura Rogora ITA 02: Lucy Douady FRA - Ao Yurikosa JPN Complete results (c) Marco Iacono

Russia with three golds and one silver and USA with two golds and three more medals dominated the Speed events in Arco. Most impressive was the boys oldes final with Sergey Rukin winning at 5.84 just 0.03 sec before his team mate Almaz Nagaev. Among the girls, Emma Hunt (16). twice doing 8.18 was relatively to her age most impressive. In general we can see that the big dominance form eastern Europe and Asia was broken. 00: Elena Remizova RUS - Sergey Rukin RUS 02: Emma Hunt USA - Iaroslav Pashkov USA 04: Callie Close USA - Hryhorii Ilchyshyn UKR

During the World Championship it was obvious that the selection process to the Olympics was not clear. The commentators and some media thought that Japan was going to select two athletes to the Olympics. Now we know that they, logically, will wait until the last competitions until they will choose their Host nation spot. What is also not clear in the official qualification document is whether the Japanese will be allowed to compete in the qualification event in Toulouse. This will have a major impact as they probably will have another 8 - 10 male and female qualified being Top-20 in the overall combined. If they are out, it will probably be good enough to be Top-30 to make it to Toulouse. When it comes to the Tripartite selection the National Olympic Committees will submit their requests to the Tripartite Commission. In reality, only countries with a max of eight athletes in the last two Olympics in individual sports, can be proposed. Later this Commission will select one male and one female going to Tokyo 2020. As it stands, I can not find any male or female that can be selected as the tripartite selection? One could speculate that if one of the best athletes could not qualify due to an injury, that person could be the selection. At the same time, the max country quota is two and further more that such selections often goes to athletes from smaller countries not so well represented at the Olympics.

Cameron Hörst, son to one of the leading climbing authors/trainer Eric, has done his first 9a, Moonshine at Wild Iris after some ten days of projecting. "It's a Frankenjura-style route--steep, powerful on small pockets", says his father who also took the picture. Video Interestingly, Cameron has lately only been climbing seven months a year as he also is a successful high school football player. The approach has been multi-sport and this is also a message Eric tries to spread as a trainer. From his Insta, we can see that Cameron also prepared himself by working on a replica.