Sport Climbing will be represented in the Youth Olympic Games in Buenoires in between 6-10th of October. All rounds will be live-streamed. The first two days, female and male will have their qualifying day and the the final for the Top-6 ranked will take place the last two days. Starting List and more info from IFSC. Here is the 8a prediction who will make the final and their ranking. 1. Sam Avezou FRA - Laura Rogora ITA 2. Shuta Tanaka JPN - Elena Krasovskaia RUS 3. Keita Dohi JPN - Vita Lukan SLO 4. Filip Schenk ITA - Sandra Lettner AUT 5. Peter Ivanov BUL - Mao Nakamura JPN 6. Martin Nathan FRA - Lucka Rakovec SLO

Ema Seliskar has done two 8b+' in Kotecnic, Agresija and Katakombe. Earlier this summer she also did her first 8A boulder. Fascinating is that in most Euro Youth Cups this summer she has mainly been #3 among the Slovenian girls. "I started climbing when I was 7 years old and from that day I love climbing more and more every day. I like both outdoors and comps, but on comps am I very nervous and I need to work on that. Outdoors I just climb and I don't think about nothing else only about next move and top and I enjoy. Rock climbing helps me to get my confidence for comps and comps helps me to train harder and harder, so I can be better on rock too. I train 5 times in a week 3 or 4 hours a day. I love training because every training is different and fun also because of my teammate Lucija Tarkuš and my trainer Boštjan Potočnik."

Vadim Timonov has done two more 8B+', which originally was 8C, in Magic Wood; Ill Trill and New Base Line. This means that the Russian has done five 8B+' in Magic just the last ten days. On his Insta there is also a short video of New Base Line.

Vadim Timonov, #25 in the WCH in Innsbruck, has done three boulders in Magic Wood which he all think could be 8B+, including Practice of the Wild. (c) Kwtrio "At the first day I thought that I can send it pretty fast. But I injured my knee and tried to find a new sequence. I think for me it is the easiest 8C in Magic wood and it’s more 8B+ than 8C."

The guidebook covering all the sport climbing in the area, has been completely revised and updated since the previous edition came out in 2013. The development of new routes has been constantly going on. Therefore, new routes have been opened in existing sectors such as Grand Face and Nitshapa. In addition, 2 completely new sectors are now available in the book: Plein Sud and Papillon. In total, more than 200 new routes can be found in the guidebook compared to the previous version. This new guidebook is another great contribution to the constant development of sport climbing in one of the world's best sport climbing areas. Here you can buy it for Euro 26 also including a free download code for the Vertical-Life App. In total, 3 700 different topos are now available from Vertical-Life.

In most sports where you can set new standards, we see stagnation. This was also the case in climbing until 2015. For some reason, during the last years, we have since seen progress when it comes to achieved grades. In fact, 9a for male is not cutting edge any more and we do not report all. The only category where we do not see strong progress is onsight. Ondra is still extremely superior. The picture is drawn on free hand in order to show the trends, including further speculations showing 9b will be, for the Top-10, will be the new standard, in comparison to 9a+ in 2015.

Shawn Raboutou reports on Insta that he has done Creature from the Black Lagoon 8C+ in RMNP. (c) Daniel Woods, who made the FA in 2016. Shawn, who previously has done 8C's as well as a 9a+, is brother to the successful competition climber Brooke. Their parents Didier and Robin Erbesfield were both leading climbers during the 90'ies. "Well the process was pretty fun and what made the difference in the end was the conditions. It was my 4th day on it this year and I had tried it twice 2 years ago. Also I want to mention that I'm not sure about the 8C+ grade and think it could be 8C. I don't feel that I have enough experience though to make better judgement then the people who have done it before me."

Kim Marschner has published a high quality video including him doing Spray of Light 8C partly upside down.

2018 Rocklands 2.0 from Kim Marschner on Vimeo.