My trip to Atlanta was one of many that I’ve made back to North America this year. In February, I went to ABS Nationals as well as the Hueco Rock Rodeo; In June, I went to Vail for the bouldering world cup and now I was in Atlanta for the lead world cup.

Last year, in Boulder, I made it all the way to finals only to slip off on a very stretchy dyno of sorts. I stuck the initial span, but when I tried to bring my hand up to match, my foot popped, and down I fell. I had my hopes high for Atlanta even though the 60 foot wall.

Qualifiers were the Saturday morning and although the wall was 60 feet, I still managed to top both my qualifiers. There were no huge surprises, only a couple of very strong climbers fell on one or the other. I felt good, which was important. After making finals in Puurs and finishing 5th, I was pretty psyched by that as well. The Puurs wall is bad for my climbing style as all the moves are kind of the same difficulty, and it comes down to the recovery and long term fitness of the climber… Here is similar, but I was hoping that with the explosive and bouldery style of setting that we usually get in the states, it might not be a problem.

Semi-finals were Sunday morning and I went out 3rd last based on world ranking. I felt good in semis, and popped off on the 3rd to last move. The route was good, fairly easy at the beginning and about half way through was a very hard crux to change walls. You had to grab a bad pinch (of which we thought was a jug) and get out left onto a volume. From there, you have to move up and left before tackling a compression type prow. Then you got up into the final headwall where I ended up falling on massive moves on big pinches. When I came down, I was in 2nd place which meant I was advancing to finals. After the dust had settled, I was tied for 3rd place heading to finals. Because I was tied with Sachi Amma and Jakob Schubert, I would climb first of us 3 and 5th last.

After heading back to my hotel, getting something to eat and mostly just resting, I was back in isolation waiting for finals. We already knew more or less the path of our finals route, and we knew it was going to be long. When we went out to preview, the route seemed painfully easy to sequence with the exception of a downclimb part near the end. The start looked easy, then you changed walls, made a long downclimb while moving left, then tackled another hard headwall finish.

They decided to alternate men and women with men starting. I was 7th, and warmed up nicely before getting ready to climb. I came out excited and ready. I did all my usual preparations, looking at the climb, sequencing a bit, swinging my arms and taking some deep breaths. The first third of the route went well, and then I started to feel not so good. I was barely over one third of the way up when I felt the pump start to come to my arms. I usually like to only feel this well over halfway through the route. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I tried not to think about it and kept going.

Move after move, they weren’t especially hard, but I was still climbing moves which meant I was slowly getting tired. I made it to the change in the walls and found a decent rest. I took the opportunity and shook out. Then I went into the down climbing section and devastation occurred. I had previewed going to a bit pinch with my right hand, and getting my thumb on the screw-on chip that we could see from the ground. When I got there, the hold was too weird to grab as a straight pinch, so my mind started thinking of other possibilities. I grabbed reverse undercling, I tried matching, I tried reaching the next crimp, all seemed like I would have a high % chance of falling if I committed. I was at that move for 30-40 seconds and in my head I still didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to make a decision. If I fell, so be it, but I didn’t have a hope of doing any other move if I spent much longer here. I decided to go down with my left hand and match onto the rail while getting the thumb with my right hand.

It worked… but it was too hard, and I could feel my arms were pumped. As I did the next couple of moves, the crowd was pleased to see me get through my struggling downclimb and I was given some loud cheers. As I moved out left, I found a small rest which I shook a couple times back and forth.

By now, I was very pumped and I knew there were quite a lot of moves left. I reached up into a big crack type hold and tried to shake, it wasn’t doing much. As I matched, I looked over at the next hold and it was too far with my current feet setup. I knew if I tried to pull, I’d fall. I saw a further foothold out right and stretched my foot out there. As I was reaching up into the crimp, in my head I was saying “I really hope this next hold is good”… and it wasn’t. A little bit disgusted, I tried to bring up my left foot. As I had stretched my right foot further out right, the hand foot match was now impossible for me. As I raced to find a foothold, the only thing I could do was match feet. I brought my right foot up hoping to find an imaginary foothold. My left hand was in a press, but I was going any further. Without my feet properly setup, I knew it, I was falling. My arms were too pumped to do anything else now, and I could let go to shake. I jumped up towards the next hold, with the wrong hand no doubt, to get the plus.

A video of my climb can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDI1AntoGD8

As I sailed down, I was already disappointed. In a route that it this long, I have to climb pretty perfectly to get a decent result. I made so many mistakes, especially in the downclimb. I looked up, looking for a foot for the move, but just didn’t care anymore. My route was over, and it is what it is. I waved at the crowd with a big smile, clapped my hands in thanks and layed down. I was in 3rd after the first 3 climbers, but I knew the next 4 would pass me as well. After lying by myself to gather my thoughts, I joined my climbing friends to cheer on the rest. I watched most of the girl’s finals which were pretty interesting and the rest of the men’s. All the men passed me although for a couple of them, they struggled a bit in the downclimb. Once they passed it, they were mostly good with all 4 getting up into the last two moves and two finishing the route.

Another competition over and I finished 7th place. I’m glad to have been in finals, but disappointed with the final result. I remain positive and say that mistakes happen, and they cost me dearly this time… Sometimes I can make a mistake and still get a favourable result. Also, I am a firm believer that you must fail sometimes in order to succeed. You must fail so that you see your own flaws and work on them. I’m looking forward to a very short week long break from world cups, then off to Asia for another 3 weekends!

It’s been a couple of days now since the Lead World Cup in Briancon. I managed to walk away with the second silver medal of my career in lead. I’m now climbing in Ceuse France for a couple of days with my girlfriend Mathilde Becerra. I think that lots of climbers after competing at the Briançon world cup tend to go climbing in Ceuse as it is only an hour and a half away.

The competition was pretty crazy and the wall was much different than Chamonix. The wall was shorter than in Chamonix with much harder routes. Initially, I thought this would be a good thing, but I found the qualifiers and semi-finals very hard. I managed to get to the last move of each qualifier route which secured me in semi-finals near the top or the athletes. In semi-finals, I had a much harder time climbing the route although still managed to get through to finals in 5th spot.

After not feeling so good in my semi-finals, my superstitious side of my mentality kicked into full gear and I started changing things up. I changed my boxers, t-shirt, took a nap, and ate red meat (Chinese style beef noodles) for lunch. I convinced myself that finals were on a completely different day, and I guess it really paid off. I even sat on a different side of isolation so that even in the back of my mind, it was like a new experience. I do all these things just to help the mental of the competition.

At 7:30pm, the women’s finals started and our isolation didn’t close until 9pm. I found it nice to have a chance to watch the other athletes because in semi-finals and qualifications, you’re so worried about getting warmed up, that you really don’t have a chance to watch anyone else. I got to relax, eat dinner at a normal time, and watch the women’s final in peace. It was nice, although the route was too easy and by the end of the finals, there were 5 tops… With the new scoring system, ties in finals are calculated in this explicit order:

1. By countback to Semi-finals and if needed to Qualifications
2. (if still tied) – By Time (mm:ss) on the finals route taken to fall or clip the final quickdraw.

Among the 8 finalists, there were only a couple of ties. Momoka Oda from Japan was tied with Mina Markovic from Slovenija in 5th place. Helene Janicot from France was tied with Johanna Ernst from Austria in 1st place. After ALL those girls topped the route, first place was calculated between Helene and Johanna, with the “slower” climber being in second. Charlotte Durif from France came 3rd by topping the finals route (in her 8 minutes, but was irrelevant). Mina beat Momoka in time and claimed 4th, with Momoka in 5th. It’s a pretty weird way to score things, and I was in lengthy discussions on how to improve it. At the end, I’d welcome any comments, but I think that the way it is scored right now is a bit strange.

Take Charlotte for example, who wasn’t tied with ANYONE going into finals. She could climb her finals route within her 8 minutes WITHOUT any stress. If she topped in 2 minutes, or 7:50 (as she did), there was no different. Now take Helene and Johanna, who know they must not only TOP the route, they must beat the other in time… So Helene has to climb quickly, but not TOO quickly, or else she may not complete the climb. There are numerous arguments for all this, but this is the clear disadvantage to people that are tied vs. people that aren’t going into finals. I know that the only reason they approved time in case of ties was to get rid of the superfinals.

If climbing can get rid of superfinals, then there is a much better chance of making the Olympics and everything because if the TV station says climbing ends at 10:00pm sharp, if there isn’t a winner by 10:00pm because of a tie in finals… it looks AWFUL. That’s my little rant on this predicament, and I find the new system “works”. It’s far from being perfect, but it does make the finals quite entertaining…

After watching all this unfold, I was already ready to climb my finals route. There were no ties in men, so it was just going to be the height of the route, and because I’ve never even seen 5 people top a men’s final, I wasn’t too worried. For the presentation of the men, they decided to do something a bit out of the ordinary. Just before the presentation, they took us up to the 3rd floor of an abandoned building just to the right of the courtyard where the climbing wall was. When they started presenting the athletes, each one of us 8 were behind a different window in the abandoned building. We would step forward with a big spotlight on us, wave our arms for a few seconds, and then step back with the light going out. I think it was pretty cool, although it may have taken them a bit longer than “organized”. After that, we still came down to the wall for our 8 minute preview anyways!

After our preview of the finals route, I was sooooo excited to climb the route. It looked very long (at least 50 moves), but it looked like a good show, and a few rests that looked not bad. The start looked delicate, but not as hard as semis. From the middle, it was mostly big moves, with hand foot matches, a sideways dyno and lots of heelhooks.

I was 4th out, so my turn came up pretty quick. I made sure to have my iPod playing as loud as I could so I couldn’t hear anything from while Jakob was climbing 2 before me. As the Korean climbing Hyunbin Min was climbing, I got my shoes on and finished preparing. Only a couple of minutes after he started, I could feel some commotion coming from the wall, and just as I asked “is he still climbing”, I saw him walking across my looking disappointed. There’s only one reason to have that look, and I was pretty sure he slipped on the route before the first roof.

I put on my liquid chalk and got into my mode. I walked out to the route, looked up for a while, and felt like it was time to go. The first 1/3 of the route went exactly according to plan. I climbed well, quickly, and got all the draws pretty well. Before I knew it, I was just starting the roof. Out the roof, I came slowly; with a big move to what we thought was a big egg sloper. We were wrong; it was a massive jug… With no feet to help the rest, my bouldering logic came streaming forward. I knew it I went into the Figure4 position; I would be completely safe on the rest. I put my leg over my arm, and then hooked my toe hook over the underside of the volume. I wasn’t moving, and I couldn’t even move my arm, it was prefect. I could just lean back, and not really use any force in my arms. After a good 40 seconds or so, I knew it was time to leave the rest, and I started out right.

What I thought was going to be 5-6 moves with the same heelhook turned into something quite different. When I grabbed the first undercling off the rest and put my heel hook in, it seemed exactly like a move I would do while bouldering, so I just mantled up on my leg, and skipped 4 moves quite easily. Inside my head, I was grinning because I absolutely love skipping moves in world cups but only if it’s easier than the original method. I perched up on my leg and rested my right arm. I matched feet with my left hand over the lip, and it felt exactly like another bouldering mantle I’ve come so used to. I sat down on my right leg, and grabbed the bottom side of the volume as an undercling. I guessed right, and I wasn’t holding onto any holds with my arms, and I was resting again.

I was over halfway up the route now, and I knew there was a sideways jump coming up. I couldn’t stay here too long, or my muscles wouldn’t be able to engage on the jump. The move coming out of the roof was hard, but I felt good from the rest. I went up and right past 3 beige holds and set up for the dyno. When I got there, we had all previewed a two hand jump, but from how the feet were positioned, I was pretty sure I was only going one hand, I just hoped I could span the gap. I put my left foot on, crimped hard with the right hand and stabbed out to the mini death ball. I stuck the hold, and it was much better than I had thought. With the good feet at max extension, I was in yet another rest and feeling great. As soon as I got to the “rest”, I knew I had been climbing for a while, and although I never come close to the 8 minute timer, if I was in another rest, I could have climbed for a long time. I looked down at the clock, and I was pretty sure it said 5:02 minutes had gone by. This meant I had tons of time. The volume was big enough to match back and forth as in the picture, and when I left, I felt pretty good again.

The next sequence of moves were very basic. Hand up, hand foot match, hand up. I did the first 3 moves pretty easily, and then got to a weird left hand banana hold, and it was BAD… I looked down and left for a foothold, but there was none. I instinctively went back to the method I previewed, hand foot match heel hook. The heel was high, but as I was setting it in and lowering my hips onto it, I felt the move come into place. I grabbed the next pinch sloper and straight away into the next volume. Another “jug”. It was kind of a jug, but with bad feet, and I had to get the clip. I clipped as fast as I could and crossed into the other part of the volume. I was staring at the next long draw and the moment of truth set in. Do I skip the draw, and try to clip from the obviously worse next hold, but not risk falling here; or do I clip the draw and risk falling after clipping (worse thing). I felt good, so I decided to clip, and it turned out to be the good decision. I did the clip, and got the crimp with my left hand. I threw my feet way out left onto the volume and was getting very pumped, and fast. I tried to rest a few times back and forth just to stay on the wall. I rested my left hand long enough to do the match move, and then was kind of in a corner. While perched on my foot, I could slowly reach out left to the next hold, fighting the pump in my arm. I grabbed the next hold and it felt so good, but I couldn’t really rest on it.

I was resting back and forth on my arms, but wasn’t recovering much. I could let go long enough to de pump, but then when I grabbed the hold to rest the other arm, the pump would come back too fast. I couldn’t stay here any longer. I looked up over my left arm and saw the 3rd to last hold. I was still 8-9 moves (and a downclimb) away from the move, but I thought about trying to do the massive skip. The downside was that the cross was big, and if the hold wasn’t good, I’d fall, and only get my left hand + as my score. I knew that if I fresh and it was just a bouldering problem, I would’ve been able to do the cross easily. That wasn’t the case, and I brought my feet off the volume and started down climbing. I brought my right hand down to the right hand sloper, and I was hoping it was better than it looked, but it looked impossible to hold on to. I grabbed it, and the hold confirmed my first impression. I knew I was going to fall on the next move, so I set my hips up to make sure I tagged the next hold. I flailed blindly for the hold around the volume to make sure I got the + off the right hand. As I was falling, I was already laughing, out of joy. I was within the last 5-10 moves of the route, and was absolutely destroyed. As I fell, the crowd came back into focus and I looked down at my time. 7:31, the longest climb of my competition career.

On the way down from the route, I had a huge grin on my face. For me to climb for 7 and a half minutes is ridiculous by my standards… I had climbed great, and when I got down, I was told I was in first place. With 4 climbers to go, I knew I was at worst 5th place. After watching Magnus Midtboe and Romain Desgranges fall below me, I was for sure on the podium. The world cup winning from Chamonix, Sachi Amma seemingly cruised by where I fell to make a few more moves and fall himself. The last climber of the night was Ramon Julian Puigblanque who fell on the big move in the middle of the route.

A silver medal for me, and another podium. Such a crazy start to the lead season. Full results for women can be found here, and men can be found here.

Now that I’m in Ceuse, I’m trying to convert my training to outdoor accomplishments. I’ve already done a few hard routes here in Ceuse, and with only one more day of climbing here, the chances are grim that I’ll actually do anything new… That being said, I hopped on one line that I might be able to do tomorrow!

All the photos in this post were taken by Heiko Wilhelm of the Austrian Climbing Team. Thanks!

The last world cup this season was held in Barcelona, Spain. This was the 10th lead world cup of the season which has been pretty long. I’ve been able to compete in 6 of the 10. I was unable to attend one in France, two in China and the one in Amman. I can only imagine that the competitors that traveled to all 10 are tired from such a long season.

Knowing that this was the last world cup of the season made me relax a bit and just have a really good weekend! Clearly depicted from our smirking face in the next shot.

The competition was held in a different venue than that of a few years ago. It was also different that the bouldering world cup earlier this year. The venue was very nice. It was inside a big gymnasium, similar to that of Valence and Kranj. The big different was that it was very cold in the gym, isolation and more or less the venue.

On my first qualifier, I ended up climbing at exactly the same time as Mathilde. It was a bit weird, but I knew that the route wasn’t as hard as normal world cup qualifiers and I probably going to get TOP. I started when Mathilde was half way up, but I still beat her to the top

I managed to get top and so did Mathilde. I finished my route and looked left just as Mathilde was completing her last two moves as well.

The second qualifier was similar to the first in that Mathilde and I did top as well. This time, we weren’t climbing at the same time so we got to encourage each other a bit more. The routes were somewhat “easy” compared to normal world cups. For the men, there were about 9 who topped both but almost 40 who topped the right one. For the women, there were 18 who topped both. In my opinion, this is way too many. 9 tops for the one qualification is fine for the men, but 40 for the other…. The route was just too easy for this level of competition!

Semi finals were much better. The route was harder, both for women and men. That being said, there were still 4 tops for the women and another 5 for the men. For the women, it’s much scarier to have ties like that because they’re so much harder to separate that the men. I was lucky enough to be part of the 5 that topped! The route was nice. Around 40 moves and went more or less straight up the wall. It went a bit left and right to traverse back left at the top, but overall the moves past halfway were nice. I’m always so scared at the beginning of the semis route mostly because I just don’t want to blow it and come last in semis. At least if I blow it in finals, I’m still 7th or 8th. In semis, coming 26th when you know you can make finals is frustrating.

Topping the semis route made me feel super happy. I knew that I had made finals in the last world cup of the season and I knew that the end to my season was going to be memorable. As I implied before, I didn’t really care how I did in finals. I made finals and that was an accomplishment in itself. I hoped to be top 5, another podium would be awesome, and if I somehow won the competition, then I just wouldn’t know what to say.

In between semis and finals, I ate some food, took another nap and just rested in the hotel. By 6pm, I was heading back to isolation as I knew that had hot water and I wanted my coffee!

After another hour and a half, we had warmed up a bit and it was time for preview. I was excited and thought to myself “one last route of the season”. We came out one by one for presentation and I saw as I ran past the length of my route…. oh my. When we turned around to face the last route of the season, I had glimpsed right. The route was monstrous, at least 50 moves. I kind of laughed and started previewing. It started on the side far of the left wall, traversed over half of the wall, then went right, then back left, and finished by traversing back to the right again. The start looked easy with a few moves that looked a bit weird. Once you were halfway, it looked very resistance with good holds. Nothing too complicated but I knew it was going to be hard for me. When we were back in isolation, I remembered the route well enough to count the moves, 55 give or take.

Because I know my style, and I also know my limits, I knew this one was going to give me some trouble. I said in my head that I wouldn’t chalk up for at least 20 moves. This just makes it so that I can get through the beginning of the route without getting tired. I don’t have the training or the fitness to be able to do 30 moves, recovery for 2 minutes and do another 30 hard moves. My prime route is only 30-40 moves with bouldery moves through (aka: Kranj). Bouldering on a rope is what I do best. Nevertheless, I was motivated to take on this challenge of a route. After a really good warm up, I was feeling good. Ramonet was to climb just before me so I pumped my ipod to drown out the crowd.

A good length of time later (over 6-7 minutes), Ramonet was done and it was Johanna Ernst before me. I took off my headphones and started to get ready. Ramonet climbing that long meant that there were “rests” or at least good holds in the middle. The problem I knew is that it doesn’t matter when there’s rests, I can only recovery a few times per arm then it’s usually better for me to keep going rather than trying to recover any more.

It was my turn a few minutes later and I went out. I put on a healthy amount of liquid chalk and took a few deeply needed deep breaths. The first part of the route was easy. I got into the roof easily and started to traverse left.

The feet were far and the moves were harder as I moved left. I managed to make it 26 moves (I counted after) before chalking up and then I was halfway! I could actually feel myself being tired. 30 moves and halfway up a route is a funny feeling. I felt good for the next few moves and stopped before what I assumed was the harder part of the route.

I left the last “rest” that I was at and I was feeling pretty tired. I did a few bouldery moves with some heel hooks and was feeling pretty good. A few moves later I did a hard cross over and the next hold was awful… I was pumped by now and I didn’t even think about going again with my left hand. I brought my feet up and starting doing an incredibly hard cross over. I grabbed the hold but my left arm was dead and I was falling. Some people asked me after if I had slipped, but I don’t think that I did. My left arm was very pumped and the move was hard. I had also climbed 45 moves and the route was my anti-style. I fell on the next move, but I was happy. I was almost laughing as I was coming down and I was mostly grinning at the fact that I had actually climbed 45 moves on a finals route in a world cup, a personal best!

Naturally I wanted to know how I was doing, and when they said I was 2nd to Ramonet, I was thrilled. If everyone else passed me (and I thought they would), I’d be 5th which would be a great finish. One by one, the competitors did end up passing me (and chalking up before I feel) so I finished a solid 5th place in my last world cup of the 2011 season!

On top of that, I had finished 6th in the Lead Ranking for 2011 and even came 2nd in the Overall Rankings for 2011!

On the womens side, I don’t even know what to say. There were 3 top outs, and because they were in a giant tie, there were 3 winners… again. I just can’t understand what the route setter was thinking when they set a route that can actually be done… Why not just make an 8c route like in Kranj to make sure it’s not done by anyone… 3 tops? This is the 3rd time this season where there’s multiple winners at a world cup… It’s just sad.

Full Barcelona results are HERE.