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 :)

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.

The biggest sensation in the World Championship in Hachioji was that Rishat Khaibullin got the bronze in Combined. Last year he was #23 in Combined after being #22 in Speed, #53 in Lead and #116 in Bouldering. In 2013, he was #8 in the Lead respectively #16 in Speed in the Youth WCH. In his three Speed WCs in 2019 he has improved from 6.88 - 6.47 - 6.15 and then he did 6.05 in Hachioji Speed followed by 5.83 in Combined. This is just sensational and understanding he just trains Speed like once a week as his nearest Speed wall is like 200 km away, we can rest assure he is far from his full potential. "My father was mountaineer in USSR, and when I was 6 years old he brought me to sport climbing. I am not a speed climber. But in Kazakhstan we climb all disciplines, so every comp I competed in all disciplines. Then I started training speed record wall. Actually in 2014 I have been training speed a lot, but now just once a week, other days boulder and lead." The Kazakhstan lives in Czech Republic and Martin Stranik confirms his bad Speed training conditions. "He is already three years in CZ. One year in Brno and three years in Prague. It is very interesting that he is such a good speed climber because it not so easy to train speed in CZ. We still don not have standard speed route, just two none standardized in Brno 200 km from Praguse. Rishat is a really good guy, a bit shy and very friendly, I really like him. Good point is also that he is really strong in small edges, what could bring him good result in boulder and lead." (c) Vladek Zumr Emontana.cz has published an interview and strangely enough he founds Speed awfully boring: "I don't like speed at all. I enjoy much more difficulty and boulder, but speed got me on the podium because I finished seventh. But the discipline is awfully boring, you're ruining your fingers, nails, running the same way over and over again, but it gives you a sense of speed."

00: Sohta AmaGasa JPN 04: Nichol Tomas THA - Oriane Bertone FRA Complete results (c) Eddie Fowke Oriane Bertone from France took her second gold in the Youth World Champion. As she has been superior in the Euro Youth Lead Cup as well as being #3 in the 8a boulder ranking, her both golds did not come as a surprise. It should also be mentioned that the boulder setters have almost been spot during the first days.

Eddie Fowke has gotten a nice picture of Oriane Bertone, the queen of the Arco Youth World Champion in Arco. In total, the 14 year old has done 44 boulders 8A to 8B+, put of which the first when she was just nine years old. She lives in Reunion island and here is a video including a mini-interview with her 18 months ago when she did her 8B+.

James Webb has had a productive week in Rocklands doing three 8B+' as well as Spray of light 8C, which also Giuliano Cameroni did. James is #1 in the ranking game at a new all time high 8a score at 12 180 points. Giuliano is #2 at 12 020 points. In total James has now recorded 1 536 boulders out of which 10, 8C and harder just the last year. On the picture by Keenan Takahashi he does Parzival