Eva Lopez has repeated Potemkin, 8c+, at Cuenca, Spain, for her first of the grade.
The 42 year old is the woman behind the famous transgression board, and her training philosophy certainly seems to be work well for her!
According to Kairn, the route was in fact bolted by Eva a long time ago, and she has had to watch a lot of the country's top climbers repeat it over the years, until she could finally do it herself. Hats off!
This is what Eva told Kairn's Pierre Délas:
The route crosses diagonally a steep wall in search of the natural holds. It has two non-stop, pumpy sections with lots of two-finger pockets that often are far apart; the only rest is at the middle.
Potemkin is my hardest route to date. It is also the one that has taught me to sustain my motivation in the long run. It's not my kind of route and it has required me to train some qualities that need a long time to develop. The longer it takes to achieve a goal, the more likely it's for setbacks to arise: you suffer from injuries, bad weather, etc. that put your pacience and even your self-confidence to the test. In those occasions, I just had the hope that my persistence in trying and keep on training would bear its fruits.
And so it did.
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