The Boulder World Cup in Moscow has just started and Janja Garnbret walked away with a clean score onsighing all five boulders. (Normally the word flash is used for doing a boulder first try in competitions but in reality it is an onsight as no beta was given to the athletes.) Fanny Gibert won the second group and Austria got five semi-finalist, Jain Kim failed to make the semi again as in Meiringen. Complete results

Christof Rauch, who has done more than 500 boulders 8A to 8C the last five years although working full time, has done Graceland 8B+ in Allgäu. This was his fourth 8B+ the last four weeks and in 2019 he has done 42 boulders 8A and harder, including two 8C's. "Finally! Thought I could do it quicker, took me 4 sessions to put it down but had some bad luck last session. Pretty hard shouldermove, my left shoulder (slightly injured since a few years) hurted after every session but I wanted to link those rad moves sooo bad!"

Jernej Kruder and Rei Sugimoto won their respective group in Moscow. In total, Japan got seven into the semi Top-20 and they participated with just eight guys as the Narasaki brothers skipped Moscow. Other than that, Russia and France got three into the semi. Once again Jakob Schubert, Gregor Vezonik and Sean McColl did not make it to the semi as in Meiringen. Interesting is also that Adam Ondra was #10 in his group very close to have missed the semi. Complete results

Isabelle Faus reports on Insta that Keenan Takahashi has done The Story of Two World’s 8C in Cresciano.

Bassa Mawem won the Speed qualification in Moscow at 5.699 where seven did sub six seconds, which is a new record. However, most interesting in regards Tokyo 2029 was his brother Mickael doing 6.344. Other than that, Keita Dohi did 6.831 and Manuel Cornu 6.900 among the non-Speed specialist. Complete results Among the female, Iuliia Kaplina was superior with 7.464. The fastest time by the non-Speed specialists were Elena Krasovskaia with 9.051 and Petra Klingler with 9.539. The biggest improvement in comparison to last year was done by Janja Garnbret with 10.050. Noteworthy is that some of the big names continue to struggle with mid 11 seconds like; Shauna Coxsey and Fanny Gibert.

Mickael Mawem is currently totally superior among the non-Speed specialists. In Bouldering he is #16 in the world ranking. As the Combined score is done through calculation, the winner of a discipline in the qualification in Tokyo is guaranteed to make it to the Top-8 final. Well in the final, placing #4 in bouldering and winning Speed, Mickael is most likely getting a medal. The twist in this story is that it is probably harder for Mickael to actually qualify to the Olympics rather then to get a medal. The reason for this is that beeing the fastest among the non-Speed specialist is not so much worth during the qualifying process. Mickael was #23 in Moscow and possibly ten of these guys will compete in at least two Boulder and Lead events. This means he would get a multiplication factor of #11 at the same time most of his competitors for Tokyo will get a factor of 15 to 33. Thus, the Speed importance is only critical when all the Speed specialists have been taken out from the result list, which will happen in Tokyo.

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Ett inlägg delat av Vertical-Life Climbing (@vertical.life.climbing) 10 Apr 2019 kl. 5:19 PDT

From the Moscow starting list we can see that the Narasaki brothers and Akiyo Noguchi will not participate. Further more, all top guys but Adam Ondra will do Speed. Interesting that three of the Top-2 in Meiringen seem to think that "less could be more" in the very long 2019 season ahead of them. The Narasaki brothers and Noguchi are back in track for Chongqing 27/4 doing both disciplines but Ondra has not yet signed up for any Speed World Cup.