terrific coincidence!

As it happens I am staying for vacations this year at the right place and the right time since the finals of the climbing World cup. In Briançon, southern French Alps, on the French-Italian border. All other events of the World cup have been cancelled and this will be the only competition of the year (which should have seen climbing becoming an Olympic sport, although sadly in a one-fit-all-skills competition). The competition here remains centred on the hardness of the route, with Adam Ondra one of the advertised competitors. I hope we can be part of the 5000 happy few authorised to enter the competition arena tomorrow, for pandemic reasons…!

on an absurd climbing competition

The New York Times has a very interesting piece on why Adam Ondra, arguably the best sport climber in the World, who climbed the very first 9c route in 2018, with a supernatural move involving hanging head down, actually has little hope of winning the Olympics. Assuming there will be Olympics this year. It is essentially because there is only one single medal for the sport, merging the radically different skills of bouldering, lead climbing and the absurd addition of speed climbing, which involves a single route, always the same, not particularly hard (6b) but to be climbed as fast as possible. To be a top contender on two categories is already pretty rare, with Ondra an exception. To master all three… Only cumulated athletic categories like heptathlon or pentathlon compare, but they come on top of existing competitions for every single of the seven or five events they are made of. Ondra came second or first in bouldering and lead, but closer to last for speed climbing. At least he made it through the qualifications.

Adam Ondra completes a first 9c

In my office hangs this poster of Adam Ondra climbing at sunset an impressive overhang with a little Czech town at the foot of the cliff, already in the shade. Impressive because of the view and of the climb which at 7c is a whole grade (and then some) beyond my reach. But now Ondra has managed to climb the first 9c in the world, which is universes beyond the impressive and beyond the fathomable, with passages only manageable feet first. Which actually makes a lot of sense, the way he explains it. The route is currently called Project Hard and is located in Hanshelleren Cave, Flatanger, Norway.