UKC

Stefano Ghisolfi has repeated Alex Megos' Perfecto Mundo (9b+) at Margalef. He spent 32 days trying the route and falling repeatedly on one move. This makes Ghisolfi the 4th person to climb the grade of 9b+ after Adam Ondra, Chris Sharma and Alex Megos.

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In reply to UKC News:

I remember a clip of Ghisolfi and Sharma going full "Allez" at Megos while he was trying the route.

It was pointed out how strange it was that an American and Italian were shouting French at a German while in Spain.

In reply to Ben_Climber:

It's the lingua franca.

In reply to flaneur:

It's bloody annoying.

In reply to simes303:

I wouldn't mind the shouts of "Allez" when I climb.  Better than the usual "shit or get off the pot" style of comment I'm used to.

In reply to simes303:

I don't mind it, in fact I prefer it Venga or dai dai!

In reply to French Erick:

dai or dawai?

CB

 

edit: maybe I have been climbing with Russians too much, but i never heard the former. Which language is it from?

In reply to UKC News:

Good grief. One of the top ten hardest sport climbing ascents of all time, fourth person ever to climb that grade, and that's all people can think to wibble about? 

In reply to French Erick:

Several times I've had to shout at people to "Shut the F*** up" when I've been on a dodgy gritstone crux trying to concentrate.

In reply to simes303:

I can imagine that people shouting "dai, dai" in that situation could be particularly unnerving!

In reply to cb294:

Italian

 

In reply to beefy_legacy:

Thanks!

CB

In reply to cb294:

Nye za schto

 

In reply to AlanLittle:

Sorry, but maybe I can explain my less than enthusiastic (non-)response. I had read the news piece, and watched the video, but in a certain sense it felt decidedly so-whattish, even though from a sports history perspective it is clearly significant. 

For a weekend warrior like me progress at the ultra hard end of sports climbing is extremely hard to relate to or even to recognize in a video. What makes this 9b+ different from the 8c or 9a routes next door? Steeper and worse holds, presumably, but how would I know? The closest I ever came to get a feel for climbing at that level was standing under Action Directe, marvelling at THAT pocket.

The article mentions some crimp Ghisolfi needed five million tries to stick, but from the Megos video (which I actually watched carefully while waiting for my computer to calculate some thing or other) it was impossible to tell which move that might have been.

In a way these high end "sends" are like someone cutting the Marathon world record by 15 seconds. Extremely hard and very significant for long distance runners, but underwhelming in a sense that it is so far beyond my capabilities, and the difference therefore so gradual that I cannot relate to it any more.

Ondra's first 9c was no different in that respect.

Weirdly, I can relate much more to watching top end plastic pulling, where the trickiness of the individual, contrived moves is obvious, even though I much prefer to climb outside myself.

CB

 

In reply to cb294:

Interesting comment not least because by definition any outstanding sporting achievement will be hard to relate to for 99.999% of the population.

In climbing you can see differences in the climbs too. That bit of rock at Margalef is simply staggering: very overhanging, no obvious big holds and very long. The climbing on Silence looks utterly preposterous. The speed at which Ondra climbs the first section is quite amazing, especially when one considers it's 8b too. And the crux of the route is ridiculous: inverting and getting a foot jam above your head in a flared crack.

But having said that I can see where you're coming from in some cases. A typical 9b might not appear more impressive than the 9a next to it. In these cases it's the numbers that often tell the story. But that's true in many many other sports too, particularly anything that involves the clock. I don't think you have to be at the same level to appreciate new standards being set in any sport. And I find climbing a lot more compelling to watch than some other sports because every new climb is something different.

In reply to stp:

Thanks for appreciating the spirit in which I wrote my comment!

Funnily enough, the only move in the Silence video that I thought obvious (not in that I could necessarily execute it in isolation, never mind get to that move without a ladder, but in that I could see what would have to come next) was that inverted foot jam.

Then again I am a dedicated offwidth masochist.

The rest, as you say, was just preposterous, but if someone told me that route was "only" 9a, there would be no way for me to tell. This makes it hard for me to get emotionally excited to hear that Ghisolfi is now the fourth person able to climb a route graded 9b+ (or even that Sharma? was the first), even though rationally I can see the significance of that performance.

CB

edit: forgot to add, between 30 and 25 years ago I competed at national and international level in a different sport (judo), so I know exactly how much extra effort goes into getting from to the top quartile to the top 10%, and how much more would have been required to reach to the top percentile! I can therefore appreciate exactly how much work these 9b+ guys must have put in in addition to their innate talent, and what it means to break into the top 4 people in your chosen sport.

In reply to cb294:

I can see where you're coming from: the only time I am exposed to Judo, or in fact any martial art, is on the telly during the Olympics. I am certain that I understand next to nothing of the skill and complexity of what I am watching, and as a result find it rather boring.

What I don't do though, is then go on a judo forum to post about how I don't get it! (said with tongue firmly in cheek)

I suspect it's due to the fact that 'climbing' is a very broad church and has been identified as such every since "Games Climber's Play". FWIW My climbing ability, too, is light years away from these levels, but still find it incredibly impressive, and glad it was reported.

In reply to Alun:

No worries! Like you I am impressed (but then I would be equally impressed looking at a 8c+), and of course it should be reported on here.

I would also not post on a forum just to tell everyone how boring I found the topic.

Instead, I gave my personal POV in response to Alan Little's post on Tue,18.58, who wondered how a thread on a top sports climbing performance could be derailed so quickly. 

CB

In reply to cb294:

What I found really put thier super abilities into some kind of perspective is watching a video of Megos do about 10 pull ups off the 45 degree slopers on a beast maker, and another of him doing perfect front leavers of them. 

Because unlike his routes which I'll never touch, I've had my hands on those exact same beast maker finger boards and I can barely hang the 45's let alone do reps off them. And in bouldering terms at least I'd be considered pretty strong but compared to these guys I've got nothing, the gap in ability is vast.

Anyone climbing anything close 9b or 8C really is an elite athlete where as your typical strong guy down the wall is just a park runner.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:

Totally agree, and I had not thought of training boards offering a direct comparison, good point!

Along a similar vein, there is a well known training video of Jan Hojer doing 1-6-11s and 1-9s on a campus board, entire series of single arm pull ups (I managed at best two or three when I was at my peak, strength wise, 25 years and 25 kg ago ...) and planks from pinky holds. Absolutely unreal. That is also the video where he says that seeing as his feet are constantly slipping he might as well not use them at all.

CB

In reply to cb294:

Thanks for the reply. BTW it was Ondra who did the first 9b+, firstly with Change in Norway then secondly La Dura Dura in Spain. Great vid of the latter on Youtube. Whilst I agree with you that you can't tell how hard it is from the video, you can see Ondra's superhuman effort in attempting it - an outstanding sporting performance in my view.

youtube.com/watch?v=V1P97VVt6_k&  (19 mins).

In reply to UKC News:

There's a video of Stefano trying to do route now up. Unless you speak Italian you may as well skip straight to 3mins.

youtube.com/watch?v=0m4_fxmDK5c&

In reply to cb294:

 

But is it as impressive as shaving 15 seconds off the marathon time? Isn't it more like running the 4th fastest marathon of all time.

In reply to cb294:

When people complain that a thread has been "derailed", what they almost invariably mean is that some posts have not gone in a direction they don't happen to be particularly personally interested in. It doesn't mean they are forbidden from masking posts in other directions - and they should, of course, do so rather than moaning about other people's posts.

 

In reply to Robert Durran:

Sure, but in this case the poster had a point, stating that he was genuinely surprised that others appeared so "bored" by the fourth climber breaking the 9b+ barrier that they would rather post about the languages used to encourage them. Fair enough, I would say!

CB

In reply to stp:

I stand corrected!

CB

In reply to UKC News:

Well to get back on track there's now a good interview with Stefano about his ascent and the route on Planet Mountain:

https://www.planetmountain.com/en/news/interviews/stefano-ghisolfi-portrays...