Viewers of the recent World Cup in Vail were probably wondering where Czech superstar Adam Ondra was if he wasn’t in Vail competing. Turns out he spent the week in Switzerland climbing 3 V14s including the FA of a project on the Riverbed boulder in Magic Wood. All told, according to his 8a scorecard, he completed 15 problems V10 or harder. Ho hum, just another week in the life of Adam Ondra I suppose…
In other Adam Ondra news, here is a brief trailer for an upcoming movie about Ondra that will feature him climbing some of the world’s hardest routes and boulders. Looks amazing. Check out this website for more info on the movie.
ADAM ONDRA – a few shots from the movie from BERNARTWOOD on Vimeo.
can’t wait. Good to hear some music besides the some ableton techno dribble.
i kinda hope they do not have any english in the movie either.
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I would be more excited to see the movie if he shaved that stupid poodle hair cut and didnt howl like a freakin banshee every time he fell
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“poodle hair” hehe
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I disagree. I would hit that so hard I would leave dents.
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my thoughts exactly…thanks for saying it
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eww. you have got to be kidding me. though i do like the dents part of that comment.
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Yeah I am both intrigued and frightened by Sarah’s comment.
Carry on.
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They should have, at least for an option, English subtitles. I didn’t watch it with sound on, because, I admittedly am in class right now, so I don’t know what the language situation is, but I’m assuming not English? We’ll see when I get home.
I guess the main thing I wanted to say, is that this looks like it was edited very well. As much as I feel Jens at 8spray.spew has conditioned me to DISLIKE Ondra because he always talks about how great he is as if nothing else besides him matters to the sport, I think that if you step away from that, he really is a fantastic climber. I look forward to seeing the movie when its all done. And something I’ve never said before, Ondra me proud to be part Czech.
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makes me*
And campbellhill has a good point. Get that kid some contacts and a haircut.
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The tantrums are a bit unbecoming although they are pretty effective apparently.
Are we really going to make this about personal appearances??
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I don’t know. I was just kidding, but I’m sorry if that was offensive.
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Apparently poodle hair will get you some ladies, so yes, it’s about appearances. Gotta say I was more than a little surprised to see that on your site, your Narcness. Who knew.
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Looks sweeeeet! I love the “a true story about the best climber in the world” thing. hahaha, oh the climbing world. I’m gonna be pissed if I have to learn how to speak another language to understand it. Or I’ll watch it with google translator open. One line at a time. Ondra may be the only 17(?) year old kid I’m a little bit interested in listening to.
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I’m just psyched for the merchandising. Adam Ondra mugs, Adam Ondra action figures, the Adam Ondra flamethrower.
/spaceballs
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Kids Love It!
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Agree with cambellhill
#1: the ondra scream is a bit excessive.
#2: there are bad haircuts, then there’s that bad haircut. He’s got the Mia Wallace look, but curly.
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The screaming does set a bad example for the kids doesn’t it??
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“…he spent the week in Switzerland climbing 3 V14s including the FA of a project on the Riverbed boulder in Magic Wood…he completed 15 problems V10 or harder..”
Funny how there’s practically no reaction to this on the bouldering blogs. Apparently the best boulderer in the world is a sport climber who only occasionally boulders. Turn the tables and put some of the so-called ‘best” bpulderers on the hardest climbs and see what happens. They probably couldn’t even do the warm-ups.
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When you think about it he is at or near the top of climbing in 3 disciplines (comp, sport, bouldering) with achievements that are hard to match by people who specialize in those fields full time. Pretty amazing stuff.
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Not to mention stuff like WoGu and Silbergeier, run-out alpine multi-pitch routes that make a mockery of the rehearsed, pink-pointed “Rated R” routes in the Boulder area. He and Sharma are living proof that the best way to up your level at your specialty is by not specializing.
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That’s video looks great! I hope it’s available in the States, and with English subtitles.
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Movie looks cool. Sharma is still king! Ondra has yet to pioneer this sport.
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Well. Ondra is doing all of this while going to school. Imagine his ticklist if he spent almost 100% of his time focused on climbing like the “pros”.
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“school”. i mean high school doesn’t really count right? or do they actually teach stuff in europe?
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I’m sure the screams will diminish with age you guys 😛
As long as they put in some subtitles I’ll be buying this movie for sure.
Any release date yet?
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I believe the website said they are aiming for Fall 2010
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well its pretty obvious this kid is wicked . . . Deff looking forward 2 see what he accomplishes in the coming years. Lets not forget the funky moans Chris was cranking out in his day. lol seriously !!!!
Question . . . . ? anybody know why some of the US youngsters are not feeling Ondra. Could it be his personal appearance??? or is it cuz he’s crushing the shit out of everything . . . I dont know but I’ve heard several elite climbers knocking on him. Gotta remember this cat from a different country maybe its not all about ” FOR SURE !!! and GANGSTER RAP ” So you really cant hate on this kid.
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Not asking you to name names but what were they knocking him for??
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after a day of work I logged back on because I’m laying around today and it is sad that no matter who it is in the climbing community that someone is going to knock them.
I have to agree that the best climber in the world comment was pretty egocentric but it is probably the truth. If he can do sharma’s routes in a matter of days While going to school, you’d have to say that if he is not the best yet….he will be.
Who cares how he does it, in what language, our if he gets pissed off. In fact I think it is good to see emotion in climbers.
Sharma used to be a little punk that thought he could do everything….how quickly people forget.
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haha sorry to start a whole conversation about haircuts on here, the dude crushes thats all that matters
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“Funny how there’s practically no reaction to this on the bouldering blogs.”
Jamie Emerson has commented on Ondra’s earlier SA flash of 2 V13s in one day.
You raise an important point about routes versus bouldering. My view is that Ondra is like Sharma, an exception to the norm in every way. Most top-level sport climbers do not boulder much beyond V12/13 if even that. Most elite boulderers do not route climb at 5.14 or up. Ondra, who probably is the best rock climber in the world (there I said it), is simply extraordinarily gifted. I don’t think it diminishes bouldering in any way though.
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I do not understand all of the hate of Adam, he is a kid still. He maybe be some climbing protege, but nevertheless, still a kid.
He is 17, and he doesn’t sign off with bumbaclot. Sounds like a winner already…
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“Most top-level sport climbers do not boulder much beyond V12/13 if even that. Most elite boulderers do not route climb at 5.14 or up.”
The point being, your average 5.13 sport climber can usually easily boulder at the level of the crux moves of their routes, but the average boulderer who can replicate their hardest level on a climb is pretty rare. Also note that DWoods upped his bouldering game recently after spending much of 2009 sport climbing. Take that along with Ondra’s performances, and the fact that sport climbers win or place in bouldering comps more often than not (whereas bouldering specialists winning sport climbing comps is unheard of), and the obvious logical conclusion is that the best training for bouldering is sport climbing. The female winner at Vail has done Free Rider on El Cap, fer christ’s sake – about as far from being a bouldering specialist as you can get. Ondra gets dissed by boulderers because he boulders better than their “elites” without specializing in it, thereby refuting the “pure”, “core”, ropeless aesthetic their ideology dictates as the most effective path to mastering pure difficulty.
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5.13 doesn’t require very hard bouldering, typically V8 max, and in fact most 5.14s don’t need anything much harder, maybe V10 tops, usually less. So usually most sportclimbers don’t actually spend time focusing on bouldering, at least in my experience. They really don’t need to.
If we took a V14 boulderer as an example, very few routes have moves at that difficulty so to “replicate that level” in sport climbing would require a very different style focused on stamina and endurance. Boulderers do hard routes though. Paul Robinson repeated Psychedelic 14c/d pretty quickly, albeit a very bouldery route, but one that hadn’t seen a second ascent in many years. Carlo Traversi did Girl Talk a fairly endurancey 5.14 in Rifle in a few tries. Daniel Woods did do some sport climbing, for sure, but nothing in comparison difficulty-wise to achieving V16 at home. Going sport climbing could even be viewed as a resting phase.
Using Vail as a measure of bouldering skill seems uncertain at this point, given that the women’s final problems were viewed by many as too easy and the separation among places hard to sort out. I don’t know since I wasn’t there.I see that most sport climbers simply don’t focus on bouldering.
I seriously doubt any elite boulderers diss Ondra; he is simply a brilliant and incredibly strong climber. The notion that boulderers have a “pure core ropeless aesthetic” or “ideology” is questionable in my experience as well. Is bouldering “the most effective path to mastering pure difficulty”? Absolutely. No other sub-discipline in climbing focuses so closely on the pursuit of difficulty in a concentrated form. Sport climbing is always about stamina and/or endurance, stacking moves atop one another. When I look back at the routes I did in the hard 13/easy 14 category, it should have been obvious at the time that the moves were really not that hard. I think the same will be said soon about V13 and V14 and in fact that is what Ondra is saying right now. As a boulderer and longtime sport climber (and trad and ice :)) I say good for him.
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can’t say i’ve ever heard any elite boulderer having shite to talk RE young mr. ondra. he is clearly a bad ass, irrefutably so.. Seems like all the hate I’ve heard of is right here, RE his haircut.. (?) okay, screech, sure, but we all throw tantrums when trying our hardest isn’t enough, or we do something stupid.. If we wanna talk about what sets a bad example for kids, just scroll through any chat like this one on any climbing website.. 🙂 As far as american coverage goes, we’re often pretty isolated from what happens in europe, but it’s not like the guy has never seen mention.. Some things/people don’t get mentioned in blogs/mags/ect.. (imagine!!!) Aaannd, there are VERY few sport routes with v14+ moves on ’em.
and peter… having tried a couple of your routes, please don’t sell yourself so short. wow crimps. clip bolts from them. yow. seems like you still have a couple unrepeated ones, hey? 😀
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“If we took a V14 boulderer as an example, very few routes have moves at that difficulty so to “replicate that level” in sport climbing would require a very different style focused on stamina and endurance.”
Really? Why not just replicate it by doing V14 moves on routes? Because very few routes have moves that hard? Then put them up! Also that comment is somewhat non-sensical, since V14 is power-dependent, and does not “require a very different style focused on stamina and endurance.”
“Daniel Woods did do some sport climbing, for sure, but nothing in comparison difficulty-wise to achieving V16 at home. Going sport climbing could even be viewed as a resting phase.”
Then why’d DW come out of it bouldering harder than before? Not following you here.
I think you guys just don’t want to admit the reasons behind what is happening (Ondra crushing the elite boulderers, sport climbers winning bouldering comps etc) because it conflicts with your view of how the sport should be, not how it is. The situation we have is the equivalent of the 4-minute-mile guys keeping up with, and occasionally beating, the 100-meter dash specialists, and the obvious conclusion is that the 100-meter guys are simply not training the most effective way. In light of recent performances, the statement “Is bouldering the most effective path to mastering pure difficulty? Absolutely” just doesn’t hold up.
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you’re really pushing the troll threshold on this thread…
Narc I think you need to start putting a warning on the top of threads like this, perhaps:
“WARNING, FANBOY SPEW SESSION IN PROGRESS, PLEASE APPROACH WITH A DEEP BREATH AND CAUTION!”
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Who knew a post highlighting one of the best climbers in the world could be so provocative?? I blame BP…
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If you want to continue to follow the ‘does screaming make you a douche’ argument, check out the new v12 in Minnesota post!
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From the website under features of the film “tens of easier routes from 8a to 9a” hahahahaha!
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Just watched the short. Looks insane. I would buy that. Don’t care what language.
Seriously, who cares about his hair. Kid is unfucking believable. Wow.
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Polar guy, you lost me..
V14 does not have to be power dependent at all; two of the (only) 3 I have done were very balancy, and very dependent on technique. The third was definitly all about stamina at 22 moves.. No one has shown any resistance to the fact that Adam is an amazing boulderer, despite (?) being primarily (up to now?) focused on sport climbing… There is no “path to mastering pure difficulty” other than yer own, and as soon as I can establish sport climbs that have v14 cruxes, you bet I will! There is no rift here between sport climbers and boulderers.. ?
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Adam’s screaming comes from his heart. Whether you like it or not, those sounds convey Adam’s personality: his desire, his ambition, his focus and his ability to push himself hard.
Some part of succeeding might have an ugly ring to it. It’s part of the picture, and with this particular subject, neither the physiological nor the psychological make up is of an average build.
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you are all trying to generalize an exception. that can’t work imho.
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The fact of the matter is he is amazing. He manages to kill everything he touches, comp sport and bouldering. He also has the uncanny ability to repeat some of the hardest routes within a few tries. He is also still very young and will likely be setting the new standard in a few years.
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has he him puberty yet? his scream sounds more like a spoiled teenager than true anguish.
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