Another line up of five things happening in climbing this week to liven up your friday
1 – Brand new Moon film with David Fitzgerald out now
Moon climbing just dropped their new film Blocbuster yesterday, featuring half an hour of hard bouldering test pieces all around the world including Gneisbeißer 7C in Maltalal, Austria, Dulcifer 7C+ and The Great Shark Hunt 8B in Switzerland, Special Edition 7C+ in Ticino, Switzerland, Sur Gauche 8A Fontainebleau, France, and many more. Watch below, click fullscreen and check out the great filmwork!
2 – Alex Puccio isn’t climbing in the Olympics
To anyone unaware, the 2020 Olympics features climbing for the very first time in a “combined” format, which means competitors will be bouldering, lead sport climbing, and speed climbing. They will then be judged on the overall results combined. This has created a lot of controversy for various reasons we’ll cover in a proper article soon.
The hardest climbers of today that are considering competing are having to make big choices about their future. Given that most haven’t done any speed climbing it means an entirely new training approach. Most serious comp climbers also climbed outdoors and enjoyed working hard projects and taking long adventures to new areas. Given the strict indoor only training routines and a pull into a much more specific style, many are weighing up their options.
Alex Puccio is one of the first big names in competition climbing to decide against competing in 2020 and has posted on her instagram as below with her full decision. We’re totally behind Alex and look forward to seeing where this super strong and motivated climber heads from here
3 – Comp climbing is awesome, you should watch some!
Wondering what all the fuss is about climbing indoors when there’s so much rock about outside? Wonder no more! Competition climbing is one of the best spectator sports you’ll ever watch, and no matter what background of climbing you come from, you’ll be pulled in to the spectacle immediately.
The Olympics are beckoning, the unknown gym kids of right now are training hard for the future, and more and more we are seeing how far indoor setting can push climbing into new realms of difficulty and new styles of problems. There’s a great article on climbing.com here about why comp climbing should be embraced. They highlight the last boulder problem of the IFSC Bouldering World Championships in Innsbruck 2018 as a great watch.
If you want to see an event now there is a big Japanese competiton coming up, a helpful reddit user has posted a guide to watching it here, or you can jump to their live channel right now to take a look. Qualification rounds are live from 4:25pm PST today.
Not convinced? Check out some of the hardest moves from the Boulder World Cup 2018 in the highlights video below.
4 – The USA Climbing 2019 Combined Invitational was awesome
Speaking of amazing climbing competition events, the first US combined invitiational was held last weekend – the first major “combined” style event to be held in the US. As the Olympics approach, this event is a big milestone is what will become more common going forward. The event was a chance for invitees to join the USA Climbing team for the Olympics. Check results and highlights.
ESPN have just inked a deal to live televise future events on ESPN2, with a one hour show that will contain the highlights of the events as well as athlete-specific segments,and a live stream over on ESPN3. The perfect alternative to weekend football.
5 – Daniel Woods repeats hardest boulder problem in the US
Sleepwalker is an 8C+ / V16 boulder in the Black Velvet Canyon area of Red Rocks, Nevada. It was established by Nalle Hukkataival who originally called it the “Dry Nightmare” problem. Nalle went out with Keenan Takahashi, Daniel Woods, and Jimmy Webb as a group to try this and some other hard new boulders in the very popular area.
On December 15th 2018 after 11 days of effort Jimmy Webb took the first ascent. Watch the latest ascent video below from mellow climbing as well as the longer video of the first ascent by Jimmy which shows some of Daniel’s original attempts too. Daniel Woods claimed the first repeat just a few days ago.
