Last weekend the international bouldering meeting known as Melloblocco was held in Italy’s Val Masino. Nearly 10,000 people from Italy and 37 other countries gathered to experience the roughly 700 boulder problems scattered around the area’s amazing meadows.
In the men’s event there were several well known climbers competing including Daniel Woods, Sean McColl and Nalle Hukkataival. However, the real standout of the event was the young superstar Adam Ondra. Well known for his prowess on sport routes, Ondra bested the impressive field by climbing 8 of the “prize” problems including the FA of a V12 called Magic Bus shown here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSeRQ2FLYZc]
Overall, Ondra wound up climbing 9 problems V10 or harder during his weekend in Italy.
Read more about the Melloblocco event in write-ups at PlanetMountain and UKClimbing.
Full results at the Melloblocco website.
Who’s the stalker with the camera? Kind of a creepy video in my opinion.
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70% crap camera work and editing. 100% creepy.
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1) that vid is creepy. stalker much? 2) anybody with any insight into how come Adam was so superior in this event? he’s strong but c’mon, Nalle and Daniel crush! insights anyone?
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was there italian heavy breathing or something? my office volume doesn’t work. at straightouttabedlam, we call this top-notch HD video!
u fools wouldn’t know ‘creepy’ if it tucked its weiner and danced around w/ night vision goggles.
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Oh, that’s what that was! I thought it was just a cheerful, flat-chested, nudist lady.
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As much as Ondra is an absolute beast, if you look at the results, it looks like the big boys didnt throw themselves as much as they could have. Woods and Hukkataival only doing 2 each and Ondra doing 8 and several others doing 5. I know the kid is strong but he is not going to be six problems better then v15/16 boulderers in woods and Nalle. Seems like a good performance, but not against a real focused field. power to the lad though.
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That seems logical to me. It would be interesting to read a report from the event that focused on what the other guys were up to. Perhaps once McColl or Nalle H. updates their blogs we will know more.
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perhaps woods and such were trying super nasty projects of doom, which never got sent? that could explain the results as well… the way sharma used to win the phoenix bouldering comps: focus on the hardest thing out there… if you send, you win…. dw may just have found something evil?
speculation.
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Here are a bunch of pictures of Woods trying a problem called Magic Box (not sure the grade)
http://mountain.ru/article/article_display1.php?article_id=3649
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Narc, that’s the same problem Adam climbs in the video. Its called Magic Bus and I think the grade is 8A+.
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DUH. I guess when it wasn’t from the stalker’s point of view I didn’t recognize it for some reason. Thanks!
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Well, apparently DW was busy doing some other things. check out: http://thenorthfaceeu.typepad.com/summitseriesroadtrip/ LOL
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What is creepy, is the noise the camera man makes when ondra takes his shirt off.
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Rough crowd…
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I think the reason that Daniel, Sean, and Nalle didn’t place super well is because it was hot, the majority of the problems were completely uninspiring, and the partying took it’s toll.
A number of the comp problems were artificially hard, made so by a bit of gaffa tape delineating what you could and what you couldn’t use. Some start positions were also made artificially hard, with a single move having to be done into an obvious starting position. These are probably just natural consequences of trying to have such a big boulder meet every year in the same location and needing to have 8 problems of roughly the same grade.
Magic Bus was the best of them, being a proud line with an obvious start. Outside of the comp the strong boys did a few other good looking things, but nothing super hard (as far as I know). If you wanted to do well in the comp then your days were spent walking around between only the comp problems, and in some ways this was missing the point of the event.
Peace
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