Claire Buhrfeind, the most accomplished female Lead and Speed athlete, got her double victory in the USA Nationals. Interesting was that Miachaela Kirsch and Alex Puccio accompanied her in the Lead Podium, beating three famous girls; Margo Hayes, Brooke Raboutou and Delaney Miller in both qually and the semi which set the ranking, as five girls later topped the final route. Among the male, Sean Bailey won ahead of Drew Ruana and Salomon Barth. Complete results

Excellent route setting at Studio Bloc Master based only on volumes created nice spectacular show. The scores were presented visually making it easy to follow who was in the lead, although the commentators did not got it straight. In total, 509 male and female participated and both Alexsei Rubtsov and Miho Nonaka won, Euro 3 000, by attempts, having got the same score*. (c) Miho Nonaka 1. Alexsei Rubsov 44 (10A) - Miho Nonaka 33 (8) 2. Jan Hojer 44 (14) - Janja Garnbret 33 (9) 3. Jernej Kruder 34 - Fanny Gibert 24 Interesting was that Domen Skofic, who was #10 in the semifinal, would have been #4 and made it to the final with the old IFSC scoring. * The official rule, as of 2018, is to present the results based on the # of Tops and Zones. However, in order to simplify, 8a has presented the result as a point score. This was basically also how it was presented at SBM.

Isabelle Faus has, beside two 8B+', done her eleventh 8B Wonderlust in St Vrain. (c) Chad Greedy "Damn so psyched. Power endurance, steep and tech, climbs great. Wasn't even thinking when I did this.. just did my choreography and kept moving, felt great to finish it ! ....... this is my first time logging since my last euro trip... I kinda got sick of the whole thing in a way... and just didn't want too log.. but now after it having been so long.. i'm starting to forget things. I'm realizing that I need to keep track because otherwise I would just forget everything.. seeing my ascents and comments I wrote after doing things is really nice.. so im back.. Also during the past 9months ish.. I had my first two serious injures.. first I strained my left ring finger.. and probably would have been back way quicker if I didn't destroy my shoulder a week later.. 6 months before that I had slightly strained my teres major.. and thought it was better.. but after taking a week off of climbing for my finger I went and did a conditioning work out.. and shocked my muscles.. basically I over used my teres major and serratus anterior so much that they just locked up.. and I had to "remodel the muscles." if I tired to hard to quick they would just lock up again and I would have to start over.. so I had a to practice a lot of patience... now its feeling basically all the way better, but I still get some phantom pains, but super happy to be feeling good just before Swiss!"

Mark Edwards did the FA of Nuts Are Not The Only Fruit, un cut video in 1991. "I originally gave this 40m pitch an 8b+ grade, but now think with modern upgrading adjustment it is closer to 8c+/9a." (c) Rowland Edwards He based the modern grade on the 8c's he has done in Sella which was so much easier. In theory, 8c+/9a would mean it is a contender for being the hardest endurance route at that time. Anybody who wants to confirm this and also do the second ascent of Nuts need to rebolt it as the route was later chopped. Mark is a Sella pioneer where he also lives and climbs and being 56 years old, he is still doing 8b's and last year he did an E9. Some of his routes from back then have been upgraded with two or three grades. "I am no grade nerd I am going for the quality but you are asking so many grade questions :) .Sadly, whatever grade the route is, is irrelevant, what is lost is a very fine sports route.

Daniel Jung, who has done a dozen 9a or harder including La Rambla, reports on Instagram that he has done the FA of Jamais Deux Sans Toit 9a+ (9a) in Mollans. (c) Hannes Kutza

It is normally the local climbers that bolt the new routes, rebolt, clean, work with access issues and produce the topos. Sales from the topos often contribute for bolts etc. During the years, we have seen many foreign companies more or less copying the local ones just in order to make commercial profit. On the sign found i St Leger, we can see that the locals ask the climbing community to support the local by buying their topo and not the "Vampire Topo". The company doing most such competitive topos just to make profit is a UK company. This happened in southern France, Mallorca etc and now it could be the case in Kalymnos.

Dani Andrada, one of the pioneers around Lleida making it a world class destination, reports on his Instagram account the FA of Poderosa Afrodita R2 9a in Siurana, Spain. © David Munilla "Two parts, a hard 8c+ and an 8b/+ above... A route I bolted 3 years ago in El Pati, Siurana. More motivation venga!"

IFSC has changed the bouldering scoring increasing the importance for zones as this is the second criteria after number of Tops. Until 2017, attempts to Tops was the second criteria but from 2018, it will be the third criteria. The impact from an athlete's perspective should be minor but in practice it would probably mean that we will see less resting and more attempts as long as the zone have not been reached. Previously, it was possibly more wise for the athletes, who had not reached the zone in several attempts, to just skip another try and focus on resting. Even if you today flash three boulders, you need to get the zone on the fourth as your opponent, with three tops in 15 tries and all four zones, will beat you. As a side note it should also be mentioned that with the new scoring, the results can be presented with points where 44 is maximum meaning you have done all four boulders. The official results will be published 4T4z 7 attempts and if the results are tied also the number of attempts for the zones will be added.

Last year, Japan totally dominated the IFSC boulder World Cup scene with five guys in Top-8. The North Face Cup in Tokyo last weekend indicates that it might be an even stronger Japanese domination in 2018 as the WC winner 2017, Jongwon Chon was just #7 and WC #2 Tomoa Narasaki was not on the podium. Instead it was Kai Harada, #16 in the WC 2017, who won ahead of Fujiwaki Yuji. In 2017, Harada and Yuji was on average #24 based on 13 World Cups. This indicates of course that there just might be an even more extreme Japanese male domination in 2018. It should be mentioned that the format is a bit different with more boulders in the qualification and semi, also including two zones. In the final, they have a knock-out system. Yuji Hirayama explains; "I love knock out format, you can share the moment with everyone much more direct than IF format and this format is fair enough to select the champion. It is not making the ranking. We started knock out format since 1998." Among the female, Miho Nonaka won ahead of Akiyo Noguchi and Natsuki Tanii. Complete results in Japanese.