Loic Zehani has done Mavericks, which is his second 8c+ in Orgon in last two weeks. Video. His father Christophe (41) did the FA last weekend. - The first part is a burly 8b+ bolted by Pierre Legrand and Thierry Legallée twenty years ago and after the rest you join an route bolted last spring by Olivier Bert.

During the Youth World Champions, several hundred juniors tested their finger strength and the winner were the Harold Peeters and Brooke Raboutou who actually got the best female result ever. What is very interesting is that the Zlagboard actually seems to be a good measurement to see who has the strongest fingers among lighter climbers. Most of the highest ranked are in between 45 - 60 kg.

Stuart Littlefair has done the fifth ascent of Steve McClure's Rainshadow 9a at Malhalm and the fantastic story is that he is 39 years old and jumped two grades. On Facebook he says, "There's been too many congratulations about Rainshadow to say thanks to everyone individually. Thanks everyone for the messages - I was quite touched! I still can't quite believe I did it... Thanks especially to Tom Randall - whose training and advice were totally crucial, to Jules for the long term support, to ‪#‎lasportiva‬ for feeding my shoe habit and last but not least to Alex Barrows. If that clown-footed loon can climb 9a I was sure I could. But also he helped a lot with the training, which was nice of him I suppose." © Guy Van Greuning/Nectarclimbing.com

The interest in speed climbing of the media and the climbers is extremely low. Sure, IFSC makes some participate in order to win prize money or to get an overall ranking but why not upgrade Speed events from vertical 6a's to steep 7a's? The Duel speed climbing in Arco is a great success every year but as you need to clip every second meter and the difficulty is 7c, it is in fact rather slow. Imagine how much more fun it would be to see the Adam Ondra to go footless on steep sections for about ten moves on a 7a route? Such a format could also help us to get into the Olympics and it would also be interesting to train for it in order to climb better in Lead comps. Such a 7a steep speed climbing would be carried out on about 12 meter high walls, where you need to unclip maybe two carabiners. What do you think?

Silvio Reffo has done the second ascent of Super circo Abusivo 9a at Paline, which was bolted and done FA of by Berni Rivadossi one year ago. Here Reffo has made a summer summary. (c) Climbing Technology.

By looking on the complete overall ranking, we can see that several of the best girls did compete in all three disciplines. However, the only ones who made it into all finals Top-8's were Grace McKeehan (c) Eddie Fowke, who won the Overall title in Girls A and Elena Krasovskaia, who won in Girls B. Among the boys, none of the best climbers participated in all parts and in juniors, the winner, Mattias Erber, was #12, #18 and #35 in the three disciplines. In reality, if the best Lead and Boulder guys would just have climbed slowly in the Speed, the male podium would have been completely changed.

Planet Mountain reports that Adam Ondra and Hélène Janicot won the Duel competition at the 29th Arco Rock Master. The runner-ups were Sean McColl and Mathilde Becerra. 8 + 8 of the best Lead climbers in the world were invited to see who is the fatest in a Duel starting with a speed qualification. Later on, they competed in quarter final, semi and finals and it was also a great ending of the Youth World Championship. (c) Giulio Malfer Every year in Arco, the Duel is just a success and possibly it could be something that also IFSC could introduce. Surely, it is much funnier to see the best guys in the world speed climbing an 8a for a minute instead of watching some speed climbers climbing for around ten seconds on a 6b? Or maybe, both formats could be used.

Nika Potapowa was too young to compete in the Arco Youth World Championship but she went there anyway, and like last year, she did an 8b, Fuego. The tallented 12-year-old did also onsight her first 7c+, Herrtuna in Nassereith.

James Noble is having his best bouldering days ever in Rocklands and we could all learn from his classical comments. Golden Shadow 8B+: "Total mental war of attrition! Marc le menestral saw me on it and described my climbing as 'dancing on rock'. A little bit pleased." Armed Response 8B: "On the go I did it I pushed that hard I went deaf in one ear for the next few minutes. Poo also nearly came out."