Beside the first day, the Boulders were in general great in the Youth World Championship in Innsbruck. Here chief route setter Jacky Godoffe and Jorg Verhoeven talk about the problems they faced.

Austria Climbing has presented the provisional standings in the Combined event. The Top-6 Juniors and Youth B will compete one more round on Saturday to see how will get the Combined medals. For Youth A, the Top-20 will participate competing for the Top-13 who will qualify to the Youth Olympics in Argentina in 2018. Claire Buhrfeind, competing in Juniors, has the best Combined overall results winning the Boulder and also winning in Speed, among the girls competing in Combined. Narasaki Meichi, also in Juniors, has the second best result being #2 and #5.

Tendon has got a long quote from Adam Ondra after he has established the world's first 9c and here is part of it. (c) Pavel Blazek "„In the morning it felt like every other day on the Project. It was hot, but the air was crystal clear and dry. But I felt very little pressure and lot of psyche. Key ingredients for sending the world's first 9c. At the end of the route when I knew I did it, I had one of the strangest emotions ever. I clipped the anchor and I could not even scream. All I could do was just hang in the rope, feeling tears in my eyes. It was too much joy, relief and excitement all mixed together... Months and months of my life summed up in 20 minutes. So much time and effort in something so short but intense as hell. Every minute spent in Norway, every move in the gym was totally worth it. This route never really turned into a nightmare, despite the time I spent on the route. It was a fun process, and it was even more fun to finish it off.” Adam Ondra Instagram and AdamOndra.com Adam has not yet named the route though he has used the working title Project Hard on many occasions in the past. He bolted the route in 2013 and focused on it last year and also this year’s entire season. He made seven trips to Norway and in total spent months there. Also he trained specifically for the project since the beginning of this year and worked closely with a physiotherapist Klaus Isele who helped him to prepare for the very specific moves.

Planet Mountain has got a full length interview with Adam Ondra. "For me it is definitely the most important achievement in my climbing career. It’s what I value the most, the route I’ve put the most effort in, where I’ve had to dig the deepest. Now that it’s finally come through it’s just incredible. An experience which is very rare and intense." So Adam (24), who has been appointed the 8a Climber of the year continuously since he was 17, values this higher than his other extreme achievements in all climbing disciplines , like; (c) Pavel Blazek 1. The Dawn Wall = Marathon 8 days climbing 2. Double World Champion in 2016 = Plastic power and power endurance 3. Change 9b+ in 2010 = Mental frustration 4. 9a onsight etc etc = Tactical skill 5. 8B+ flash Jade = Power

The Guardian has made a long nice interview (with great pics from (c) Pavel Blazek) where Adam among other things say; "When I did this climb I did not feel it was at my absolute limit. I can imagine climbing a harder route. I think I can climb more at this grade one day and potentially harder.” Emontana has also done a full length camera including the perspective from Adam's girlfriend, Iva Vejmolová, who did belay him during the 20 minutes. "In this moment I personally started to cry. (laughing) I knew that if he didn’t screw up, then he was going to send it. For me, It was so difficult, to wait and see what’s going to happen next."

The Youth A Speed World Champions 2017 are Aleksandra Kalucka Polen and Sergey Rukin Russia. In total, Russia got one of each medal and also a #3 result. Complete results and Video Highlights Interesting to see the great progress since the Youth World Championships 2016. In order to qualify to Top-16 you had to do 11.96 respectively 8.53. This year 10.66 respectively 7.82 were needed. The best Combined female result after two disciplines is Luiza Emeleva from Russia #2 in Boulder and #13 in Speed. Among the boys Philip Shenk from Russia won the Boulder and was #43 in Speed and Keita Dohi from Japan #2 in Boulder and #26 in Speed. The Top-20 qualifies for the last Combined event on Sunday where Top-13 qualifies to Youth Olympics in Argentina 2017.

Carlos Granja from Ecuador and Daria Kan from Russia, who won after a false start, are the new Junior Speed World Champions. Beside the false start, there were a total of two falls and one big error during the semifinal making it not so exciting to watch. Complete results What about adding like two seconds or so for a false start, like in Paralell slalom after a fall, in order to avoid anti-klimax? Claire Buhrfeind, who won the Boulder event was #4, meaning that sheis the best Combined climber overall after two disciplines. In practice, this also make her a contender for a medal in Tokyo 2020. Her best time was 9.17 meaning she could make finals also in Speed World Cups and she is well ahead of other top Combined climbers. Stefani Jacopo from Italy and Polina Kulagina from Russia won among the Youth B, where all Top-4 girls were from Russia. In total, Russia got eight of the twelve awarded medals today.

Heavy rain in both the semifinal and the final for the juniors but even so the organizers managed to put on a great show in front of two big crowds. In the end, USA and Japan won double victories. 1. Claire Buhrfeind USA - 2t3 4b8 2. Maya Madere USA -2t9 4b16 3. Johanna Holfeld GER - 1t1 2b2 1. Yoshiyuki Ogata JPN - 3t7 4b6 2. Meichi Narasaki JPN - 3t9 4b5 3. Jan-Luca Posch AUT - 2t2 4b4 Complete results More pictures and a report can be found at Austria Climbing USA and Japan have dominated the Youth World Champions so far. In Youth A, there were also two girls from USA on the podium and two boys from Japan. Among the Top-4 in the Youth B semifinals, there were six from Japan!