Edu Marin reports on Insta that he has done Adam Ondra's Valhalla 9a/+ in Flatanger. "It has been very important for me to carry out this route after suffering a serious accident falling to the ground from 4 meters. It has been a whole process to maintain the motivation and form during the days of recovery, a whole learning." (c) Esteban Lahoz Edu has previously done some 15 routes 9a to 9a+ and 8c onsights. The Spaniard has also done MPs up to 8c, boulders up to 8B+ and he won the World Cup in Chamonix in 2006.

Although competition climbing, especially in Bouldering with all parkour and slabs on volumes, is getting further away from outdoors there seem to be synergy in between the two disciplines for most. Jernej Kruder, the Boulder World Cup winner 2018, is the best example. The Slovenian is rather going outside doing all disciplines rather then training indoors. In reality it is actually very hard to understand how doing trad routes and multi-pitches could help Kruder to win the Bouldering WC often on side-way dynos on volumes. One possible explanation is that it is about the mental game and to be obsessed about pushing 100 % no matter the challenge. Possibly Kruder would not have won the WC in 2018 if he only had trained bouldering indoors as he would have been bored, stopping giving 100 %. On the other hand, the successful recipe for the young Japanese team seems to be hopping around in different bouldering gyms in Tokyo and almost never go outdoors. The great conclusion is that there seems to be totally different patterns available to become #1 and this is something trainers should be aware of. Another interesting point is that almost all the best climbers, out there, have had a successful World Cup competition career. David Graham, Barbara Zangerl, Jonathan Siegrist and James Webb are some of the exceptions of the WC competition and outdoor synergy.

Gholaamali Baratzadeh, #21 in the WCH in Innsbruck, and Jernej Kruder flashed all four boulders in the Adidas Rockstars qualification. Most of the big names from Innsbruck did take part and a total of 19 did do all four boulders. Among the female, Stasa Gejo was #1 with three flashes and the first to not make it to the semi did not do any top. Also Miho Nonaka, Petra Klingerl from the WCH final made it to the semi. Complete results © Christian Waldegger On Saturday the semi, Top-20 + 3 wild cards, will be live-streamed 11.00 following IFSC rules. The Top-6 kick-out final starts 20.15 where only the Top-3 remains after the two first boulders. Then these battle for the two spots into the super final starting 22.20 on two identical boulders. If there are ties, achieved holds will separate. In the super final, the fastest that hit the buzzer on the top wins. Baratzadeh: "It was a great way to celebrate my birthday flashing all the boulders, maybe my best day climbing so far. This is the second year that I’m the best in the qualification; the problems were easier than in the WCH, but I still think it was hard to flash all four of them. So I’m really happy to have made it. I will try to keep my performance up for tomorrow at the semifinal and maybe the final!"

Mina Leslie-Wujastyk has done Nordic Plumber 8a in Flatanger and her story is really great. (c) Esteban Lahoz The plan was to go bouldering for two weeks around Trondheim with her partner David Mason. Once realizing Flatanger was so close, she wanted to check it out and do some easier less steep routes but Maria Sandbu inspired her by doing Nordic Flower 8b+. In short, with rainy days that made David do his first sport route ever, Mina was full on the 50 meter super steep Nordic Plumber but no success. After returning back home for a wedding, another ten days Flatanger trip was booked and she sent it on her second last day. Video of the finishing rail.

The Rauch diaries Ep.I from 45degrees on Vimeo.

Moritz Welt has done his second 9a, Sever the Wicked Hand in Frankenjura. "Three sessions, rather low end 9a imo, but so beautiful! 8A boulder problem into 15m of hard endurance climbing with only one bad rest." In total the 17 year old has done 235 routes 8a+ and harder and 44 boulders 8A and harder. In the 8a Combined ranking game the young German is #3 after Adam Ondra and Daniel Woods. (c) Manuel Welt

A total of 20 male and 20 female will participate in the Combined Sport Climbing in Tokyo 2020. 1 + 1 is guaranteed the Host Nation and 1 + 1 Tripartite Commission. There is also a maximum of 2 athletes per nation. Qualification events are listed in hierarchical order 6 - Top ranked on the Combined World Champion in Tokyo 2019 1 - Overall World Cup Winner (OWC) 2019 6 - Qualifying event in Toulouse for Top-20 from OWC 2019 5 - Continental Championship 2020 In practice this means that the highest ranked male and female Japanese in the Combined World Champion in Tokyo will get the only qualification spot for Japan. Later the remaining team, can only hope to be the chosen one. There is no guarantee to qualify even if he/she win all events, after being second Japanese in the Combined World Champion. If the, especially male, Japanese domination will continue it is likely that all non-Japanese Top-20 in the Combined World Cup will make it to Tokyo even if they are dead last in the Qualification event. However, it might be that no athletes from Japan and another countries that did fill their quota in the WCH in Tokyo, will be allowed to compete in Toulouse. This means that it might be good enough to be Top-25 in the OWC in order to be allowed to do the qualifying event. The result in the Combined World Cup is based on multiplication on your two best relative ranked result in all three disciplines. In other words, this means that there are almost no chance what so ever for the Speed specialists to make it happen. Further more, countries with high ranked Speed climbers can let they participate also in two Lead and one Boulder WC. Later based on the calculation result, they can decide to let that Speed specialist be included in the Combined relative ranking, if other athletes from their country benefit from it.

Piotr Schab has done his 16th 9a, Gancho perfecto in Margalef. In the 8a ranking game, the Pole is #2 after Adam Ondra also including four 9a+' just the last five months. (c) Lena Drapella "Wow I’ve been dreaming about this route since I saw the „Progression” movie for the first time. Came very close in my 5th try, then fall another few times in the very last moves to finally send it with ease."

Josh Cornah has done the 60 meter Thor's Hammer 9a (+) in Flatanger. (c) Henning Wang who the day after did Nordic Plumber 8c. "It took about two months of effort. A lot of mental effort, especially for the the top half which I punted off of two times. Once from the very top. Eventually I found a key bit of beta in the last week of my trip, which helped a lot. Also the bottom seeps a lot, varying day to day. It never dried completely but some days it was un-climbable for me. Then conditions cleared up and I got through the bottom twice, once I was so nervous and climbed terribly, punting off the last move. Then I got my shit together and next day on I enjoyed the climbing a lot more and sent. After not having much motivation before leaving NZ it was kind of what I needed to get my shit together and my mental game."

During the World Championship in Innsbruck we could see that the number of tops the six finalist completed did vary a lot. Further more, it seems like there is no guideline from IFSC to the route setters how many tops to opt for. The number of preferred tops in the climbing community seems to vary as some think five tops as in the female final is perfect, meanwhile other prefers how it was in the male final, i.e. 15 tops. Here is a diagram showing the 10 - 14 tops are ideal and that it is better with 24 tops rather then 0 tops. How do you think the optimal curve, # of tops versus target achievement in %, in general, should look like?