Welcome to Behind The Wall, a weekly newsletter published every Saturday.
Each week, I highlight the favourite things I’ve watched, read and listened to from the world of indoor and competition climbing. I also track where you can buy competition tickets during the World Cup season.
The Shanghai Olympic qualifier series event finished last weekend. You can watch replays on the Olympic OQS website. You may have to go digging down the page to find them. Athletes will compete again in Budapest (Hungary) in June, where 38 athletes will win their Olympic tickets.
This week, we saw two routesetting battle videos from Bouldering Bobat and Josh Rundle. We also saw a pair of collaborations between Louis Parkinson (Catalyst Climbing) and Stefano Ghisolfi in Innsbruck. We also had podcast interviews with competition climbers Ben Hanna and Alannah Yip.
I know there is lots of great content that I don’t know about. Let me know at behindthewall@inside-climbing.com, and I’ll give you a shout-out if I feature it.
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Watch
- Plastic Weekly recaps the Shanghai Olympic Qualifier Series. Will Mejdi Schalck win an Olympic Sport, and why could Sport Climbing have been in the Winter Olympics instead of the Summer Olympics? Tyler Norton delves deeper.
- Come Climb With Me - Novice vs Intermediate vs Pro Routesetters on Bouldering Bobat. A routesetter battle between Pro, Intermediate and Novice route setters with the Bouldering Bobats. Who will win out? Now we need someone to create a “Great British Bake Off” style series for routesetting.
- Alex Megos and Christoph Hanke recreate “that” Handstand Boulder from CWIF 2024. Watch Alex and Christoph recreate the CWIF male final handstand boulder as part of the Movement Lab series.
- Another routesetting battle between professional routesetter Cailean Harker and novice setters Josh Rundle and Melissa Clements. Two novices with $10K of holds compete against Impact Route Setting Owner Caliean Harker with $20 of holds to see if they can set a better boulder at the Climbing Hangar in Reading, UK.
- Louis Parkinson (Catalyst Climbing) and Stefano Ghilosfi collab in Innsbruck to show what training for the combined Boulder&Lead format is like and a fun game of flash or die at the Kletterzentrum Innsbruck gym.
Read
- Climbing Gyms Are Unionizing. What Does That Mean For Our Community? Read about how Climbing Gyms in the States are attempting to unionise on Climbing Magazine as workers try to benefit from the massive influx of money into climbing and raise their wages from well below the living wage.
Listen
- Alannah Yip on The Nugget Climbing Podcast. Listen to Alannah talk openly about Alopecia, her struggles with an eating disorder, and how she is working on the Athlete Commission with the IFSC to address RED-S.
- USA Competition and Rock Climber Ben Hanna on TrainingBeta Podcast. Learn about how Ben Hanna trains for competitions, how his mindset has changed and why spray walls are better than boards for competition climbers.
International Climbing Competition Tickets
The competition season has started, so here is the rundown of where you can find World Cup and OQS tickets.
- Budapest (Hungary) Olympic Qualifier Series Event: You will not need a ticket to enter the Ludovika Campus, where the Budapest OQS event is being held, according to the Olympics OQS FAQ (at the bottom of the page). The schedule for the event is available.
- Innsbruck (Austria) Boulder, Lead and Paraclimbing World Cups June 24 – 30. World Cup Pass Tickets sold out within a few hours. Single-day tickets will be available on May 1. You will only need tickets for the Boulder finals and Lead semi-finals and finals. Some tickets are still available.
- Chamonix (France) Lead and Speed World Cup July 12 – 14. The event will be free to attend.
- Briançon (France) Lead and Speed World Cup July 16 – 19. The event will be free to attend.
- Olympic Ticket resale platform. Some tickets for the Olympics are coming up through the official resale platform.
- European Championship in Villars (Switzerland) August 23 – September 1. Tickets are yet to be announced.
- Koper (Slovenia) September 6 – 7. Tickets are yet to be announced.
- Prague (Czechia) World Cup September 20 – 22. VIP tickets are sold out, and seated tickets are almost sold out, but standing tickets are still available
- Seoul World Cup October 2 – 6. Tickets are yet to be announced.
That’s a Wrap
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Behind the Wall. Let me know what you think at behindthewall@insideclimbing.com or DM me on Instagram.
See you next week!
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