Alexey Rubtsov, Boulder World Champion from 2009 who tore his tendon on his long biceps head winning in Ljublijana 26/5, is back on track with two 8c+' in Céüse; Mister Hyde and Baa, baa black sheep. "It's been 12 weeks since surgery, my shoulder feels good and does not hurt anymore:) I felt comfortable climbing. This summer I spent recovering and climbing rocks. Slowly returning the level. Now I have returned home from the rocks and am ready to start training. But my shape is far from ideal. I haven’t done any bouldering in the gym yet, so I'm going to try it :). I will return to the competition in September and start with the European Championship in bouldering on September 6-7. I climbed the speed for the last time in May, and I will return to it in September. But to be honest, after the injury, partly my thoughts were: “everything is not so bad, at least I do not need to do speed now :)”." Noteworthy is that he did 7.27 already in Moscow which was one of the fastest time of the Bouderer specialists. This would mean that he should be able to do at least 6.5 in Toulouse but for that he probably would need to get twice Top-26 in Lead.

hugo parmentier, who this summer has done both his first 9a as well as his first 9a+, has done Trip Tik Tonic 9a in Gorges du Loup. (c) Olivier Moise "It took me 8 days and 17 try. This is my pure anti style. I am really happy to have done a hard route in that style. Same day I try than did 8c 3rd go, 8b+ (tried once before) and 8a+ flash. That was a surreal day after days of struggling in one single route. Now I go back to Paris for school and I will train and climb in Font till January." How can you explain your recent progress? I think it is a result of a year of serious and hard training. But I think it's also a mindset. I really want to progress in climbing and that my main goal in parallel of my studies. I struggled with finger injuries the past years. Now I am starting to know myself better and to be careful.

The results in the Female Youth B boulder qualification is yet another confirmation that one more zone is needed in bouldering. Out of the 89 participants 25 girls = 28 % did not get any zone. Imagine how these girls, some of them travelling 20+ hours to reach Arco, have to explain to friends and relatives that they did not even enter the scoreboard. By getting one zone you could end at #44. As four girls topped all four boulders we can not just say that the boulders were too hard. The problem is that there is a big difference in between the best and the ones on the lower half. As it has been the same problem in all previous boulder comps, it is very hard to understand that IFSC do not add one more zone at least in the youth competitions.

Jorge Diaz-Rullo has done the FA of Patanics 9b in Rodellar. It is a 60 m steep link up of three routes; Pata Negra 8c, the crux of No pain no gain 9a+ and the end of Botanics 8b+. "The most impressive line that I have ever climbed! I didn't think I could do it until the last bolt. Brutal amazing days with the best people! Thank you!" (c) Javi Pec The 19 year old is for the first time ever, #1 in the ranking game having done three 9b's this summer. In the Combined ranking game, the Spaniard has been the superior #1 for more than a year.

Jonatan Flor has done the FA of the 60 m long Apocalipsis de la Gioconda 9b in Rodellar which is a 25 m extension tp Apocalipsis an 8c+/9a he did the FA of last week. It took him around one month of effort to take it down. (c) Guillermo Dominguez

Japan got six out of the nine medals in the oldest male and the youngest boys and girls finals. In the youngest boys, they were most superior being 1 - 3 in both the semi and the final. Shuta Tanaka, in the junior, was the most superior out of all winner as he he was the only one topping both qualies as well as winning both the semi and the final. The worst result for any of the nine participating Japanese were #5. It should be mentioned that in the oldest male category, they filed three appeals out of which one was accepted. Yesterday, 8a published and article saying appeals should be forbidden and replaced with "VAR". Oriane Bertone, #3 in the 8a boulder ranking game, from France won the youngest girl category and she was also won the semi by topping it. 00: Shuta Tanaka JPN (c) Eddie Fowke 04: Junta Sekiguchi JPN - Oriane Bertone FRA Complete results

00: Laura Rogora ITA (c) Marco Iacono 02: Nika Potapova UKR - Hidemasa Nishida JPN Complete results Interesting is that Slovenia did not have one finalist on the second day of the Lead final and that Austria did just get one #7 and one #8 position. Noteworthy is that Brooke Raboutou, who just qualified to the Olympics, was third among the juniors.

Giuliano Cameroni has done the FA of Raised by Wolfes 8B in Rocklands and comments. "One of the best boulders on earth. On Insta, he continues, "Opened this new boulder with @dawoods89 up at top shelf! One of the best climbing spots and one of the coolest blocs ever. Let us also add, one of the coolest bouldering pics. (c) Chad Greedy

1. Janja Garnbret: Winning three titles just confirms that she is the best ever competition climber in the history. Amazing performance by here. 2. Japanese domination: 50 % of the finalist in the Combined final. Amazingly impressive and there must be few individual sports where we see one country being so much ahead. 3. Japanese Speed progress: Tomoa Narasaki did clock 6.15 which would have taken him to the final in most prior Speed World Cups. Among the best Boulder/Lead climbers the male Japanese totally dominate. 4. Rishat Khaibullin: Last year he was #23 in the Combined doing 6.72 in Speed. He just trains it once a week so he does not match the criteria being a proper "Speed-specialist". 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 beating the world champion Ludovico Fossali in the Combined. As a matter of a fact, this was good news for IFSC being a way better overall climber. In his last Lead run, he wisely skipped two clips and continued winning the bronze. 5. Drama especially with Time: As time decides equal hold score in Lead, we see faster climbers and more drama. In the first 6 - 7 seconds Speed run, it is decided whether you will get 1 - 4 or 5 - 8. With the multiplication format this have a massive impact. At the same time, the overall winner is, at least in theory, an open affair until the leader is out in Lead.

In football and actually in most sports, it is not possible to make an appeal against the referee's decision. For some reason, it is the opposite in climbing which sometimes make us wait for an hour or so until we have the final result. Sure the judges can make wrong calls but that is how it is. In football, in order to solve this, they have introduced VAR for critical goal situations in the most important games. As it stands, the team coaches can make appeals and then the result could reflect also how good the coaches are to make it in writing. Would it not be great to skip this appeal procedure and also introduce VAR in the Olympics? The VAR guys would be looking at the live-streaming and other cameras and they could whisper to the referee that he/she should have a look at certain incidents. In the same way, the referee could ask the VAR guys to check close calls. Further more, with a head referee there could me some space for not following the rules strictly black or white. In situations like Adam Ondra's questionable stepping on a bolt, the referee could say that it was in the grey zone and that Ondra did not benefit from it.