carl dawson, a 7c+ climber at the age of 65, has published a long article with great pictures describing the recent development in Peloponnese. Unless you're "in the know", most climbers link Greece with Kalymnos, although with the recent book Best of Greece: Sport Cimbing, the secret is out... there's more to climb in Greece than that busy little island in the Aegean Sea! The Peloponnese (that big 'lump' of mainland Greece down in the south) has seen a lot of activity with climbers from Patras, who kept quietly putting up seriously hard lines for some time. However, the emphasis has now swung quite clearly to the East coast of the Peloponnese, to the winter destination of Leonidio, the fabulous tufas of Kyparissi, and to Zobolo, Monemvasia and Nafplio. So get the flights booked to Athens now!"

James Webb has done his 36th flash of an 8A+ or harder Boulder by Bleu sacré in Fontainebleau, which is actually considered to be an 8B by most of climbers. Without his personal grades, the best flash boulderer in the world would have done almost 50 8A+ to 8B+. In the 8a ranking game, James has been more or less #1 the last five years and in fact, his trend diagram has been pointing steadily upwards for the last ten years.

Planet Mountain reports that Tom Ballard has done the FA of A Line Above the Sky at Tomorrow's World in Dolomites, suggesting the first D15 in the world for it. "This is the hardest bit of climbing I have ever done. There are some very big ‘shouldery’ moves, and then you must just keep going for close to 50 metres!" Thanks to Riky Felderer/CAMP for the picture. You can follow him on Instagram, @rikyfelderer

Climb in Peace have gathered some famous climbers like Adam Ondra and cleaned Santa Linya. They have also put up info signs how to get rid of human waste using a shovel and a plastic bag. Article from 8a suggesting the same thing in 2010.

James Webb has had another low gravity day in Fontainebleu today. He did Toupie carnivore assis 8B+ and The Big Island 8C. (c) Neil Hart "Climbed the island a few years back. Got the full line on the quick today. Doesn't add much difficulty but def seems the better start. Quality! Back for some tries on the assis soon."

Fanatic Climbing reports that kevin LOPATA has done Jour de Chasse 8C (B+) which Jan Hojer has put up. Last month, Kevin did his first 8C, Misti. "This Wednesday, I succeed in my current project "Jour de chasse" 8C, very hard compared to the other testpiece of the Opium boulder "Mécanique élémentaire". The crux is to go up with the famous undercling of Narcotic to the slopers at the lip at the boulder. You need a very strong body tension for holding the final jug. Wonderful and so physical."

Based on some 1 600+ unique votes from the poll "Male dream climbing partner": 22 % Chris Sharma 20 % David Graham 13 % Fred Nicole 12 % Adam Ondra 08 % Alex Honnold 07 % James Webb 06 % Alex Megos 03 % Jan Hojer 10 % Other (Dani Andrada, Nalle Hukkataival and Daniel Woods mentioned most often)

Alberto Rocasolano has just got the first repeat of Catalán Witness the Fitness. The FA of this boulder problem was done by Chris Sharma, who didn't give it an exact grade but commented in this way: "I'm not so sure about the grade but it's something like an 8B/+ into a 8A+ , so whatever that means ;)". After that, Nacho Sánchez was able to link the first part saying that he broke a hold at the crux so it might be 8B+ then. In the end, Beto was the first to repeat the whole line two days ago, suggesting 8C for it. At the Spanish 8a.nu site, we took advantage of his ascent to talk to this guy from Madrid, who is not new to hard grades having repeated Nacho Sánchez's 'Entropia' 8C and also having the FA of 'Soyuz low start' 8C under his belt. What is the most difficult part of this problem? How do the moves feel like? Is it very long?
"The most difficult part is a first section of 7 moves, super bouldery, where I broke a crux hold and made it even more difficult. The second stretch is more like endurance. It's got 17 movements in total." It seems like roofs is a style that fits you well...
"Well, I like everything, either roofs or not." You're running out of difficult rigs... Have you got any other super hard project?
"Now I've got two hard ones: one near home which I found this year and it's one of those that you can retire from climbing if you send it... hahaha...; and, the other will be around 8C+ or 8C/+ for sure and I'm really close to send it... But one needs to send things before bragging about them... hahaha." Would you like to try and eventually send the original 'Witness the Fitness'?
"Just travelling to there and trying it would be a dream made true for me... hahaha."

It seems quite likely that Climbing will actually make it to the Olympics 2020. This is of course very good news and IFSC should get full credit for making it happen. The IFSC plan is to let 30 + 30 athletes compete in Lead, Speed and Bouldering during four days. Three medals would be awarded to the best male and female competitors with the best combined score. Detailed info starts on page 40 of this document. The suggested qualifying quota is; Top-3 in the World Championship Top-3 in the Youth World Championship Top-9 in the World Ranking Top-3 in five Continental Championships; Africa, Europe, Asia, America and Oceania. In practice all these qualifying events, including the World Cups, must be run with the same four days combined format. Surely, it will be a hype and most of the best will go all in. However, it just might be that several who are not willing to sacrifice full season for a ticket to Tokyo see a great opportunity. Instead they could focus just on one discipline and win the World Championship or World Cup, when the best must have a wider focus. Imagine that maybe none of the guys in the Olympic 2020 will get a discipline medal in the World Championship or even in the overall World Cup 2019? A previous 8a poll shows that most climbers agree with Chris Sharma that this suggested new format is a big shame!

The Ledge Podcast has made an interview with Chris Sharma, where our legend talks about his vision for his gym to become an international climbing meeting point for everyone coming to Barcelona before they go rock climbing in Catalonia, He seems to think he has too many bolted projects and at least one of them is harder than La Dura Dura 9b+, which he already has spent some time on. He thinks that he can do harder routes but he does not know if he wants it as it takes so much commitment. Patxi Usobiaga is moving to Barcelona and they have been discussing if also Chris should try training hard for a period. Regarding Olympics, Chris is really straightforward. Although he is positive for climbing to make it into the Olympics, he disapproves of the format. "The format that I have heard about I am not so happy about. Combining the three format is a big shame!"