CWIF turned out as always to be a good show and a great start of the comp season 2019. Especially among the male, many of the best participated and Nathan Phillips, #6 in the WCH 2018, had secured his victory even before he had tried boulder #3. Runner up was Sean McColl ahead of Alexey Rubtsov who did score four zones. Among the female, we saw more tops and Melissa Le Neve, who stopped doing Boulder WC's in 2016 when she was #3 overall, won ahead of Stasa Gejo. Third was Chloe Caulier who could have won if she would have stuck the last boulder as we see on the picture.

Isabelle Faus has done her 18th 8B, out of which eight just the last year, Catllica 8B in Clear Creek Canyon. Two weeks ago, the 26 year old did her third 8B+. Isabelle is the new 8a ranking game leader. (c) Chad Greedy "Great one! Harder if you don’t swing your feet early, can’t belive how good this one turned out! Chad vision."

National Geographic has appointed Babsi Zangerl as one of their adventures of the year presenting her in a long great interview focusing on her repeat of Magic Mushroom in 2017. She did it together with her partner Jacopo Larcher and it was the first and second repeat of the 950 meter long route including pitches up to 8b+ which was set up by Tommy Caldwell in 2005. 8a has for many years said that Babsi is the best allrounder in the world. In 2008, she did the first female 8B boulder and then in 2009, she got an herniated vertebral disc which had her to stop bouldering. In 2017, she did an 8c trad and in 2018 she also did her first 9a. Strangely, nothing of this is mentioned in the article. In total, there are five adventurer of the year and the other climbing related is Maureen Beck, disabled climber without left arm below the elbow who has won the Para Climbing Championship twice and in 2018, she got the bronze.

Nika Potapova and Fedir Samoilov have done Fuck the system 9a in Santa Linya. Nika did her first 8b+ being 12 years old. Last year Nika was #2 in the Lead Youth WCH and she won the Youth European CH in Bouldering. Fedir did two 9a's in 2016 being 18 years old and then he had an amazing 2017 being #9 in the Lead World Cup. The following winter he got some elbow and wrist problems missing training but in the last three WCs 2018, his worst result was #11. " I have a very good coach. His name Artur Pechii and he is like a superman doing all the things that sportsman need including: coaching, planning trips, driving a car, doing massage, etc... I'm trying to make it to the Olympics. This year will be very hard and the very hectic for sure :) because you have to take a part in almost all WC`s"

Alizée Dufraisse reports on Facebook that Dave Graham has finally done La Rambla 9a+ in Siurana. More info to come.

Stefano Ghisolfi has been #2 in the Lead World Cup the last two years at the same time he has done four 9b's as well as a 9b+, last December. This year his focus is qualifying to the Olympics and he just won the Italian Cup in Bouldering. When it comes to Speed he was the Italian Champion in 2010 at 7.96 which has made him take it kind of slow with the Speed focus until now. In other words, the Italian is both one of the best rock climbers at the same time he is one of the contenders for a medal in Tokyo 2020. (c) Sara Grippo from Queen Line 9b he did three days ago. How have you been training this winter and what is your next focus? After Perfecto Mundo (9b+), in January and February my focus has been mostly competition bouldering, I trained a lot on my weakness (slabs, coordination, jumps) and in February I was already improving and I won the first Italian Cup. During the week I choose to go rock climbing for one day per week, and I started trying the Queen line. The focus continues to be bouldering and improving in speed too, I'm running around 8 seconds The comps I planned to do are the first four of bouldering, and all the lead circuit, and some of the speed ones. The main focus will be Tokyo and Tolouse if I don't qualify in Tokyo. I hope to do under 7.50, I think it could be enough for qualifying, but i could be wrong. I will continue climbing outdoor once a week, I'm lucky to live in Arco so I can go half day outdoor and even train in the afternoon, Laghel is just 10 minutes from home. Now I will try another project there, the King Line, that has a harder ending to the Queen Line and is at least 9b+, and there are still other 2 possible 9b or harder routes there, my rock projects for this year will be close to home so I can still focus on training without traveling too much, because I will travel a lot for competition already. What kind of impact will the Olympics have for the federations and the athletes? Olympics had a strong impact in our federation, the focus now is 100% on the people who want and can qualify for Tokyo and want to train in the combined, and unfortunately the choose not to have specialist (for the single discipline) in the world cup circuit, so many strong climbers in bouldering and speed will be cut out the world cup circuit to let the combined climbers to compete. There will be a huge split between competition climbers (that will try to qualify for Tokyo) and rock climbers (probably all the specialist who cannot compete in the world cup will focus on rock climbing).

Guntram Jörg has done his second 8C, Arzak in Murgtal which was put up by Fred Nicole. The Austrian was one of the leading boulders until 2015 when he got busy with setting up boulder gyms and finishing his study in economics. "Well - back to business of hard bouldering! First repeat after two holds broke off. Very physical boulder - the crux is linking all the moves. This line has everything: It´s hard, scary, long and good looking. Proud to climb something like this! Before I started with my climbing gym business my number one passion was establishing new boulders and repeating hard lines. In the last years my focus has changed and I have a lot of other things going on. I have responsibility for two companies and a lot of great employee. There are many goals to be reached, not just in bouldering outdoors."

The highest mountain/hill in Denmark is 171 meters. Now their climbing federation reports that they have started to build a 80 meter wall outside a CHP plant. The wall will be 9 meters wide including five bolt lines separated in four pitches. The most overhanging pitch will be four meters.

song yunchan, who started climbing 27 months ago and who won the Asia Youth Championship in Bouldering last year, has been on a 1.5 months trip to Railay which he finished by doing Avocado Power 8b+. "The Korean school will start a new semester in March. So I was able to go to Thailand by using the school winter vacation. For the first 2 weeks, I adapted my body to the local condition there. Then I tried to climb the target Avocado Power(8b+) while adjusting. There were many difficulties especially that it was a bit far between holds due to my short height (146 cm). I still feel happy thinking about it and am proud of myself. My goal in 2019 is to go back to Thailand and challenge 8c+ and to win in Asia K Climbing Championship - China 2019.

The first big competition in 2019 starts the next weekend, The CWIF. Here is a prediction of who will qualify to the Olympics without any knowledge from the 2019 season. It would make no sense to predict who will win the World Cups as very few of the top climbers will give this the highest priority. The Combined World Championship takes place outside Tokyo 11 - 22 July and the Top-7 will qualify to the Olympics. The country quota is two but for Japan it is just one as the second one will be selected by their federation. This means that it will probably be good enough to be Top-10 to get an Olympic ticket. In Innsbruck last year, Japan had four male and three female in the Top-8. Here is a prediction of who will qualify to Tokyo from the 2019 most important competition: 1. Tomoa Narasaki JPN - Janja Garnbret SLO 2. Adam Ondra CZE - Miho Nonaka JPN 3. Jakob Schubert AUT - Jessica Pilz AUT 4. (Kokoro Fujii JPN) - (Mei Kotake JPN) 5. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA - (Akiyo Noguchi JPN) 6. Jan Hojer GER - Ashima Shiraishi USA 7. (Meichi Narasaki JPN) - Sandra Lettner AUT 8. (Keita Dohi JPN) - Petra Klingler SUI 9. Mickel Mawem FRA - (Laura Stöckler AUT) 10. (Kai Harada JPN) - Stasa Gejo SRB 11. Jernej Kruder SLO