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 Olympics is in full flow, and climbing media is gearing up for when Sport Climbing starts on Monday, August 5th, with the male semi-final Boulder phase and female Speed qualification and elimination rounds. We got quite a few routesetting interviews with UKClimbing, sending out questions to the head routesetters for Lead and Boulder. Climbing Magazine talked with the Boulder Headsetter Garret Gregor about the difficulty of the boulder problems in Paris. We also had a dump of content from the North Face Climb Festival deep water solo event in London and more Olympian interviews.
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
- Janja Garnbret Unfiltered: Climbing’s Greatest Competitor | adidas Terrex. The first part is a series of interviews with Janja Garnbret, talking about how she got into competing, who her role models were when she started competing and how she deals with the pressure in competition climbing.
- Janja Begins, 2016–2017 | Udini. Udo Neumann takes a look back at Janja Garnbret’s first season on the World Cup circuit back in 2016 and how she compared to 2016 & 2017 Boulder World Cup Series champion Shauna Coxsey and her compatriot Mina Markovič at Studio Bloc Masters.
- Route Setting for the UK’s Scariest Climbing Competition | Impact Routesetting. Impact Routesetting takes us behind the scenes of what it was like to set and test the deep water solo routes for the North Face Climb Festival.
- This Climbing Wall has a 60ft Fall | Josh Rundle. Josh Rundle shares his experience with fear at the North Face Climb Festival.
Read
- Natalie Berry from UKClimbing sent Paris 2024 Head routesetters Garrett Gregor and Martin Hammerer some questions about setting the Boulder and Lead phases of the Boulder&Lead combined format in Paris.
- Just How Hard is Olympic Sport Climbing? | Climbing Magazine. Owen Clarke talked with the head routesetter for Boulder, Garrett Gregor, about how hard competition boulders are. (They are V12-V14 for the male athletes and V9 -V12 for female athletes for the record).
Listen
- Colin Duffy (Olympian) — His Journey as a 2x Olympian, Comp Scoring & Strategy, & Future Outside Goals | The Nugget Climbing Podcast. Steven interviews Colin Duffy about how he found climbing, going to Tokyo 2020 and his future outside goals.
- Mental Health and Breaking Barriers with Climbing Youtuber Hannah Morris | Not Your Typical Climber Podcast. Mel Reeve talks with Hannah Morris about YouTubing, getting out of her comfort zone and the challenges of being an amateur climber while being a professional in the climbing scene.
- Comp Setting & the Olympic Games | Another Setting Podcast. Niki and Jake talk about competition settings for their gyms and give their predictions on the Olympics.
- Vertical Drag Race Part 1: Hans Florine, World Champion Speed Climber | Climbing Gold. Climbing Gold talked to Hans Florine about how speed climbing has changed over the years since he won the first Speed World Championship in 1991. They also talk about how Florine took his skill from competition speed climbing to Yosemite to break speed records on El Capitan.
International Climbing Competition Tickets
The competition season has started, so here is the rundown of where you can find World Cup and OQS tickets.
- World Youth Championship in Guiyang (China) August 22 – 31. Tickets are yet to be announced.
- Paraclimbing European Championship in Villars (Switzerland) August 24 – 25. The event will be free to attend and tickets are not needed.
- European Championship in Villars (Switzerland) August 27 – September 1. The event will be free to attend and tickets are not needed.
- Koper (Slovenia) September 6 – 7. Tickets for the semi-final and final will be available for pre-sale from July 8th – August 24th at the Koper 2024 World Cup site.
- 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.
- Paraclimbing World Cup in Arco (Italy) September 27 – 28. The event will be free to attend and tickets are not needed.
- Seoul World Cup October 2 – 6. Tickets are yet to be announced
- Asian Continental Championship in Tai’an (China) October 10 – 14. Tickets are yet to be announced.
- IFSC Madrid 4 Speed (Spain) October 18 – 20. Tickets are yet to be announced.
- Pan American Championship in Santiago (Chile) November 18 – 24. 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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