Bouldering World Championships – male podium compared.

But first we’ll try to set the stage: What happened so far in competition bouldering in 2014?

Jan Hojer has won the Bouldering World Cup 2014 and leads the IFSC bouldering world ranking. Jan brings a new athletic and dynamic style into bouldering.

Jernej Kruder didn’t have his best season in 2014 so far. Jerney is a bit of the dark horse in this final, but is capable of coming up with creative and unusual solutions any time and has bouldered, as Adam Ondra and Jan Hojer, 8c outside.

Adam Ondra is the best climber of our time. In 2009, at age sixteen, Ondra competed for the first time in the IFSC Lead Climbing World Cup and won. In 2010 he also won the Bouldering World Cup, making him the first athlete in history to win both the disciplines, lead and bouldering. He has climbed more than 1000 routes between 8a and 9b+, of which more than 500 were onsights including several 9as. That makes him the climber with the biggest repertoire of hard climbing moves. Combined with his mental alertness and swift problem solving ability that makes Adam Ondra hard to beat on a good day.

Unlike the female podium, where Akiyo Noguchi, Alex Puccio and especially Juliane Wurm dominated every round, our male podium failed to do so by missing problem #3 in the semis. This problem could only be climbed by finalists Tsukuru Huri (left) and two times bouldering world champion Dmitrii Sharafutdinov (right) who even flashed it !!!

In the finals…

… looked Jan Hojer  like the sure winner after 2 of the 4 problems. For #3 he needed 10 attempts though, quite unusual for him. After Adam Ondra and Jernej Kruder had done #4, Jan had to climb it too to win. He couldnt though so Adam Ondra was the only one with 4 problems climbed. Between Jernej Kruder and Jan Hojer, only the bonus holds decided. Adam Ondra became lead-climbing world champion later in 2014 too!