Emil Abrahamsson started climbing when he was 15 years old, being quite overweight at 158 cm and 75 kg. Two years later he climbed outdoors for the first time and during his second outdoor year he did several 8A's. Now he is an 183 cm powerhouse at 77 kg doing 8B without any specific training and twice he has been #4 in the Swedish Nationals. "In 2017, I started to focus on something I had skipped before, crimping. I actually began crimping just last year, before that I refused as I was afraid of getting injured. I have always been strong at pinching and grabbing slopers and slowly I am also building up my crimping strength. Finally I feel I can increase my crimping strength without being afraid of injuries. I have noticed that this has improved my climbing a lot." What's interesting is it that he has not had a trainer or done any structured or organized complimentary training. His focus is outdoor and repeating as many problems as possible instead of just going for the hardest projects. "I climb as much I can but I am quite limited by my university studies and I feel as though my body needs to rest a lot to prevent injury. During good weeks I can climb 4-6 days a week but if it is good weather then I'll just be climbing outdoors. I have not done so much gym training before this year, which is when I began doing some core training which helps a lot. I try to do it after every indoor session but nothing structured yet." In regards to being asked questions about having been a super talent and if he had been very successful in any other sport when he started training, then he explained that he had been overweight! "I have never thought of myself as being very talented. This is something I like a lot so my body has just adapted to it. I am always focused for climbing and the sport is something I want to continue with forever. The feeling of sitting on top of a boulder after a send with a cup of coffee is just the very best thing. Nowadays, this is my focus and the absolutely best way to get away from stress and the ordinary life." Erik Carlsson video from when Emil did an 8B which he thought to be 8A+.

There are now more than 4.3 million star rated climbs in the 8a data base which will guide you to the best crags in the world. You can also search the Ticklist by the highest onsight percentage or thumbs up percentage and you can search by specific grades. By checking the number of ascents you also get a good knowledge if the routes are worth trying. If you want to go into more detail, you can check if many females or youngsters have done it or read comments in order to find out if the routes are good for you. As the topo authors can not try all the routes in the data base, they have to trust the FAs, which they might be a friend of. Surely, these guys can also have the preference for a certain types of routes that might not reflect the 8a community opinion. A good example of this is the E.T. sector in Kalymnos, which is one of the highest star rated crags on the island at the same time it has not gotten good score in the 8a databas.

Janja Garnbret and Jongwon Chon put on a stellar performances as they both flashed all four final boulders and won Euro 3 000 each in the Rock Ljubljana which was shown on Slovenian TV. 1. Jongwon Chon (KOR) - Janja Garnbret (SLO) 2. Jernej Kruder (SLO) - Katja Kadic (SLO) 3. Aleksej Rubcov (RUS) - Chloe Caulier (BEL) 4. Jan Hojer (GER) - Hannah Midtbo (NOR) 5. Domen Skofic (SLO) - Mina Markovic (SLO) More info and pics

Margarita Martinez, a former ballet dancer who came to USA from Puerto Rico at 16 years old, started climbing at 34 years old. Having had many injuries, health problems and also working hard baking wedding cakes she stopped climbing having reached 7c+ due to Rheumatoid Arthritis (see picture) for four years until she was 49 years old. At 53, having done several 7c+' again she decided to start pushing harder. Margarita started to focus on pull-ups and also pushing hard on the Maxi-pull endurance hang board until she got a new serious shoulder injury. The doctor suggested a replacement which should have meant stopping climbing. With a magic therapy she recovered again and having done four 8a+'s, she did Whole Shot 8b in Maple Canyon last year which originally was 8b+. (c) Edwin Teran Now she has made great progress on two 8b+ projects but once again she has gotten a serious health problem due to a spinal fracture. "Getting old sucks but you make lemonade with all the lemons of life." Climbing less for the moment she is focusing more on her new business, Drypointe, which is a small ball that will dry out the smell and bacteria from your shoes. How is it possible that your amazing story has not been picked up by the climbing media? Not sure, I guess I don't advertise myself. Some people like to kiss and tell but not me I climb because I love it. The grade or notoriety is not important to me. I don't want to be defined by climbing. I want to be defined by a good person to others, a good mother/wife and a good human.Trainingbeta has done a podcast interview with me.

Alex Megos, who did the first ever 9a onsight four years ago, reports on Facebook that he has done it again and this time in Gravere. The name of route is TCT which was put up by Stefano Ghisolfi, who commented, "I want to dedicate this route to Tito Claudio Traversa (that's why I called TCT), because I want everybody will remember him forever." TCT is chipped link-up of an 8c and an 8b+ but it was not Stefano who chipped it. Adam Ondra has also onsighted it before and is one ahead of Megos with three 9a onsights. Amazing is however that Megos has onsighted 100 % of the 9a's he has tried to onsight. Wow! How was it? How many 9a's have you tried to onsight but failed? It was great! Kinda funny because I didn't expect it at all. I felt really bad warming up, got pumped very fast on the warmup routes and felt my finger a little bit which is normally a sign that I climbed a little bit too much too soon. So first I thought I will not try it at all but then got talked into it and decided to just give it a go. It was anyway a totally unplanned thing that we ended up at Gravere. We were planning on going somewhere else but then the evening before Stefano's car didn't work anymore so we had to find someone to go climbing. Marcello Bombardi said he was going to Gravere so we went with him. At the crag they told me that there is a 9a here that Adam onsighted a couple of years back so they were really excited and told me I should try it. Despite feeling not very good I thought I might as well just give it a go. And then it worked out! I'm not totally sure but I think that was the first 9a I really tried to climb onsight. It never worked out for me that I had a proper chance to try it. In the Frankenjura I've done already everything and it's super hard to onsight routes, and then all the other times I climbed a 9a either there were no quickdraws in or no chalk or I just bailed. So I ended up never really preparing and trying."

Alex Megos, aki az első 9a pn-sightot mászta pár éve most ismét aprított, írta a Facebookján, ezúttal a TCT nevű utat mászta meg, melyet Stefano Ghisolfi nyitott pár éve. Az út neve emléket állít Tito Claudio Traversának, egy fiatal tehetséges olasz fiúnak, aki pár éve sportmászás közbeni balesetben hunyt el. (A köztes karabínere nem a hevederbe volt akasztva hanem a ficánkolást megakadályozó gumifülbe.) Régi olasz design szerint vésett út, egy 8c és egy 8b+ összemászásából áll. Adam Ondra is on-sightolta pár éve a TCT-t, és Megos előtt van 3 9a OS-el.

Eddie Fowke has presented some interesting thoughts on The Circuit Climbing in regards the problem with the increased number of participants in Bouldering WCs. Eddie says that this results in longer stay in isolation, the holds get greaser which is not fair and that the coaches and judges get tired. Three suggestions are put forward: maximum of 4-6 competitors from each country, introducing quarter finals, besides starting with five min brushing chalk break after every tenth climber. 1. In the last WC in Japan, 21 males participated and clearly this is too much but at the same time, among the 22 best, there were ten from Japan. It might be a good idea to say that a maximum of 10 athlete from one country is allowed during WCs and World Championship. 2. To introduce a quarter final is only good if this is only mandatory for the guys below a certain ranking. Bouldering should be about power and already now, the competition format is too much of an endurance challenge. 3. A five minute brushing break is of course nice and could be done after every 20 climbers. If there are 70 competitors, this would increase the qualification time by 15 minutes. Another way is to reduce the number of participants from one country to three or even two if you are not within a certain ranking. This would, in fact, be more fair as it would allow that more of the highest competitors would be allowed to participate. Most probably the best way to handle the increasing number of participants is simply a combination of introducing quarter finals for the lowest ranked and to just allow three non-ranked climbers for each country.

Alex Puccio has done her 46th 8A+, Position of power in RMNP. "Fun power endurance boulder. Got a bit pumped at the end." In total, the vice-world champion from 2014 has done 142 boulders 8A to 8B+ and she is #3 in the All time high ranking where Ashima Shiraishi is #1.

Ten years ago, Barbara Zangerl was one of the very best female boulderers in the world. In 2009, she got an herniated vertebral disc which made her stop bouldering. Including two 8c+'s and several 8c's she is also nowadays among the best in sportclimbing and the same goes for trad, where she recently did an 8c FA, Gondo Crack. Even so, multi-pitches should be her best discipline and here she the #1 female, here the full very impressive tick list. The good news is that she is now fully recovered from her back injury and last week she was a superior winner in the Melloblocco. "The injury is still there. It is a broken disc. On the MRI pictures it looks still bad but I think I am totally recovered which means I have no more pain. But of course if do a lot of bouldering, jumping down from the blocs---then it comes back, I feel pain and I have to rest. I'm always doing a lot of bouldering in our home gym, especially in winter. There we have extra soft pads where I can train without any risk of hurting my back--- while jumping off the wall." What is your plan and ambition for 2017? My focus will be on bigger walls....I love alpine and big wall climbing....and maybe I can push my sport climbing limit a bit further--we will see. But in general I get the best out of climbing if i combine all styles of climbing....that is my way to stay motivated all over the years and I love it to do trad alpine and sport....and a bit of bouldering... This summer I want to climb in Chamonix....I never have been there before....or I would be also interested to climb a route on Eiger, if the weather is good this summer.....In Autumn we will go to Yosemite again.... 8a interview from 2015. (c) Thomas Senf & Klaus Dell'Orto

The 14th Melloblocco ended on Sunday May 14th with the presence of 2700 registered athletes and exitmated 6000 climbers reaching the valley. Melloblocco is the widely recognized bouldering event with the most participants in the world. Held in Val Masino 100 km north of Milan, Italy, takes the name from “Mello” and “Blocco”: Mello is a lateral valley of Val Masino, and blocco means boulder. Unique for a competition, Melloblocco is held on real rock with new competition boulders every year. Val Masino offer, still, unlimited possibilities of new boulders all of them easily accessible. In the competition, there were 12 boulders to do and Barbara Zangerl was superior by doing eleven up to 8A. Among the male, Anthony Gullsten won ahead of Jorg Verhoeven by counting the number of flashes. It should be mentioned that Alex Megos did his ten in just three days. More info (c) Klaus del Orto 1. Barbara Zangerl 11 (6) - Anthony Gullsten 11 (4) 2. Lara Neumeier 7 (1) - Jorg Verhoeven 11 (2) 3. Madeleine Eppensteiner 6 - Alex Megos (10) 1