The September 2007 issue of Outside Magazine features a spread on Chris Sharma’s whirlwind year that will be featured in the upcoming film King Lines. This whirlwind year that started with his ascent of the Es Pontas project has taken Sharma from Greece to Spain to Venezuela to California to France and finally back to the States for the King Lines premiere. The article piqued my interest and I did a bit of searching on the Outside website and I found some pretty cool old climbing articles.
The first article is from December of 1996, and it outlines how 15 year-old Chris Sharma was the future of the sport despite being barred from World Cup competitions due to his age. There were also concerns that his dynamic style would not work well on the techy Euro circuit. Hans Florine pegged it exactly right when he said:
He has better technique than people give him credit for, but most importantly, he just doesn’t know what can’t be done.
The second article is from February of 1999, and it features several up and coming young climbers, several of whom are still making headlines today. 12 year old Ethan Pringle is described as being:
…known for passing along excellent beta ? jargon for information on routes ? in a squeaky prepubescent voice that, he hopes, will transform into a robust baritone any minute now.
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