Alex Puccio has done Ground control 8A+ in Mt Evans as well as repeated Isabelle Faus' Gold Rush 8B in Coal Creek. "Thank you Fausey and Chad for inviting us up to climb and showing another cool boulder! :) Harder V12 or soft 8B. Breaks down to a V6/7 to a V11 to a V9. Really fun traverse. :)" (c) Cameron Maier Alex has now done 94 boulders 8A+ to 8B+,out of which 14 the last twelve months. The runner up in the World Championship in 2014 is #2 in the ranking game after Fausey.

Vadim Timonov, #6 in the Moscow in April, has done his fourth 8C, Black Eagle Assis in Rocklands, on his fifth bouldering day in a row. Two days before he watched a Paul Robinson video and flashed his third 8B, Hipster whale. (c) Nikita Tsarev "I made a lot of classic boulders in the last trip here. Now I am more focused on hard boulders. I knew what to prepare for, what I need for good shape here. Now I climb 5 days in a row and I feel great. I have a big list. continue tomorrow I will stay here till 22 of July. I already watched a few boulders. Finnish line, Living large, Spray of light etc. I think I will try all maybe without Living large. This is an excellent boulder, but a problem in the organization. You need a lot of mats, supporting, and it is very difficult to gather people to go so far."

Irina Kuzmenko, who did her first 8A just some eights months ago and who was #14 in the Moscow WC in April, has done Fragile Steps 8B (A+) in Rocklands. The Russian did her first 8A just some eight months ago. "it was my first normal rock trip in life, before I never have been on boulders. I was just without any goal and motivation! Happy that I found my passion finally. Me and my boyfriend Vadim (Timonov) just changed a bit of our style of climbing training before the rocks. It’s started to be more crimpy, also included a bit of campusing and maximal pull ups. For us really important to keep the power, because after Africa we’ll compete in World Championship in Tokyo. This African trip we was waiting so much and we plan to stay here almost one month! Hope it’s enough to do all the projects, but in my experience it’s never enough time."

Gabriela Vrablikova, who 20 months ago had 8b as her personal best, has done her first 9a, Sever the Wicked Hand in Frankenjura. In between 2015 and 2017 she did 15 WCs and her best result was #26. "I have changed a coach and we started to work on everything! I have started to go rock climbing almost every weekend this year. I truly believe in strength of mind and I knew I could climb this route. It took 15 tough sessions though. I work four days a week. Training on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. One session each. Mostly boulder or some exercising, no time for lead climbing indoor. After training ice bathtub as often as I have the courage. It is the best and fastest regeneration for me. And yes, I still hate it! Weekends on rocks. I have holiday starting next weekend and I am super excited to finally go to Ratikon! I want to do sport multi-pitches, Silbergeier is my dream but I have no clue about it so far. Then Chiara (Hanke) recommended me another 9a here in Frankenjura and then something in Spain for sure. I am still growing, I will not set any limits to myself."

The male final started with great climbing by Meichi Narasaki falling in a dynamic move to the top. As the next two guys, Alex Megos and Yufei Pan quite easily topped it was obvious that the route was way to easy. Luckily, for the route setters, all the following did mistakes including Tomoa Narasaki who seemed to flashing an 8a, until he slipped as he stood on the rope. In the end, Sascha Lehmann won and he was also the one who executed the final moves in the best style. Complete results

After poor route setting for the male, it did get even worse for the female as the first seven did fell on the same move. Then Janja Garnbret showed up and just locked off statically and it was like she was using another set of holds. Confirming the possibly worst route setting ever, even with so much over capacity, she fell on the next move some ten moves from the top. In practice this meant we got the same result as in the semi meaning 15 year old Chaehyon Seo was runner up ahead of 16 year old Ai Mori. Both did not look nervous at all, just another training route in the gym, was their approach. Complete results

Here is the Olympic prediction #9 and Tomoa Narasaki is back as 1. As there are many of the best female Speed specialists doing Combined, it is likely that one of them will qualify to Tokyo. By winning the Speed qualification and being almost last in Boulder and Lead, she will most probably advance to the final. Another victory there and she can not get worse then fifth and actually bronze is possible with 1 - 8 - 8. So Aunak Jaubert is put as #4 but almost as good chances have Anna Tsyganova. A maximum of two male and female from Japan are allowed to participate and it seems the biggest risk for any of the mentioned ones not being Top-4 is that they are just #3 in Japan in the qualifications. 1. Janja Garnbret SLO - Tomoa Narasaki JPN 2. Miho Nonaka JPN - Adam Ondra CZE 3. Akiyo Noguchi JPN - Jakob Schubert AUT 4. Jessica Pilz AUT - Kokoro Fujii JPN 5. Aunak Jaubert FRA - Jan Hojer GER 6. Shauna Coxsey GBR - Manuel Cornu FRA 7. Julia Chanourdie FRA - Alex Megos GER 8. Petra Klingler - Yufei Pan CHI

The last WC in Villars did show that IFSC need to act in order to better find the correct difficulty. Obviously, the route setters have hard times to keep up the increasing new standards for the male and that more female are below 155 cm tall. The easy solution, as have been mentioned before, is that best that did not qualify to the semi respectively to the final are asked to join the route setting team. If the ranked #10 in the semi would have just tried the final route, most probably, they would ave found out the the male route was too easy and that the female crux was way too hard.