soulclimb: prosince 2008

THIS IS INSANE! THIS IS HOT! THIS IS EXTREME! This is what MEJCUP 08 was like in my point of view...

It's early morning. 8am. There're 6 men sleeping in a room. It's Kub's and mine bedroom in the flat where we stay in Brno. The room is smelly this morning. The five sleeping guys are no metrosexuals - they're climbers. No wonder about the smell. I'm fast asleep until I hear a children-tune like from far-away. It's the main tune from children TV tale called Broucci. And it's playing from Sampon's cell phone. It's an alarmclock. OH SHIT...the day has just started.

The four of us plan to take part in Mejcup 2008 open bouldering competition today. Only Kub has decided to prefer another bouldering competition with friends from Uhersky Brod. So Jirmi, Honza Zima, Horomirek, Shampoo and I have a quick breakfast and by 9am we check in for the competition at Freesport bouldering gym. There's qualifications taking place here and at Rajce climbing wall and at one spot outdoors.

We decided to start at Rajce:

it was crowded with competitors [there were 146 boulderists altogether], covered in white dust from the omnipresent chalk in the air and noisy like hell because of the capoeira camp taking place in the rest of the sport hall.
There were 6 boulders prepared for the climbers. I sent two easiest of them. Guess I would send another if it wasn't for an incredibly long queue of people eager to give this traverse problem a try which allowed me to try it just once [and slip in the second move of the boulder problem]. The rest of our crew does much better and they also send the one I was just talking about and another sloper problem with a difficult move over a huge bulge looking like a swollen pimple (on the above picture with a climber already standing on this feature).

Later the guys moved to Freesport to try another 5 problems there and I spent some more time trying to send the second of my two successful problems on Rajče. It was a funny layback, a lot of strenght in fingers was required to pull hard on a little crimper hold and after some 15 tries I finally sent it. Exhaustion. The lack of regular training. Screaming tendons running from my fingers down the arm. That's what I was thinking about leaving Rajce for Freesport.

At Freesport there were 5 problems: one compulsory, two send-able and two seeming pretty fucking unreal. The easy one with a snake-like hold was a piece of cake even for such a weak imitation of a climber like me. I never tried any of the other boulders but I saw Horomirek sending a tough problem consisting of a mix of slopers and two-finger and a crucial one-finger pockets. Rather impressive to see him doing it in a quite casual way like: What's goin on man?...

It was still 2 hours to the deadline of qualifications so we moved to the suprising outdoors spot with 4 buildering problems - THE CUBE:

The Cube was big fun. A sculpture definitely remembering the communists era Czechoslovakia presented 4 problems, all of them technical unlike the power boulders indoors. Climbing here was a generally welcome diversification which in my opinion raised the spirits in many participating climber who might have been pretty annoyed by the over-crowded competition system indoors. It definitely put me in a good temper. The sun was shining, the air was fresh and cool and people enjoyed solving the problems in a super-friendly atmosphere as if it was in Modrin or Petrohrad on real rock boulders, not in the centre of the city. The boulders on the cube were rather easy to send except for one of them. This one had a difficult beginning with a heel fix and smearing on the rather polished surface of the cube.

Even such an accomplished climber like Kristyna Ondrova had some trouble figuring out the right sequence of moves in the beginning of this boulder:

In the end offcourse she sent it, probably her 3rd try. The Cube has come alive. Art has been defined by climbers. And passers-by were stopping by, watching the urban monkeys occupying the old-school sculpture and the city people were turning into bystanders wondering what the fuck had been going on in their neighbourhood..Even one homeless guy was enjoying the show leaning against counter of closed tobacconist with his elbow and sipping his tetrapac wine. Can you spot him on the following picture? (remember Monty Python's Spot the Looney sketch):

The Cube saw many sends and by the time the sun had sunk behind "the Triplets" around 1pm the time was ripe for final tries before the deadline at 2pm.

Honza Zima climbs on this video and follows two sends of the possibly hardest boulder on the Cube/SORRY, I STILL HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT HOW TO PLACE HERE A VIDEO FILE OF 63MB SIZE/:

Our crew returned to Rajce for the last half hour of the qualifications. As far as I can recall Jirmi managed to send the monstrous sloper problem this time. Šampón had already left us picking our results cards to deliver them with his own one to Fleda for the Mejcup organization team. So we remained the four of us in the slowly emtying Rajce which that day featured a capoeira training camp with loads of childrens, brazilian instructors and other dancing warriors. Guess breathing must have been a lil' bit difficult in that white chalk saturated air. The next thing became a dinner.

Well Jirmi asked me to take'em to some place where they could eat well especially emphasizing the big volume of the stuff to eat. We went to Legenda.

We ordered beer and chicken with cheese and ham in bramborák [sorry Chris English doesn't have a word for this, it's made of potatoes] which sort of crowned the day even though MEJCUP finals and the afterparty were still ahead of us.

We were talking about the bouldering between digging in those big plates and the hardest boulder of the day was discussed as well. The winner was following: really a hard nut to crack, onsight almost impossible...

After the killer meal we came back to the appartment, had a coffee and watch Return 2 Sender with Timmy O'Neal - btw: a hardcore joker - and had quite a cool relaxed time. Especially when Honza started talking about his own visit to Indian Creek this spring [the movie was shot there too]. Oh cracks! There's actually a cool article on www.lezec.cz about Indian Creek as well.

The Grand Finale

It was awsome! Extreme and scary. Adam Ondra won again sending all the four hardcore boulders. The female category was sort of more exciting as far as the results go since the golden and silver competing girls (Katarina Fickuliakova and Vera Kostruhova) gave a superb performance.

Adam Ondra got another in probably a very long line of prize crashpads while the female winnerKatarina looked as if she really needed one.

Fleda was already swelling with people and the start of the finals was a little bit lagging. When the crowd was allowed to enter the hall with bouldering profiles on the stage the show was on. A DJ was playing in the background beginning with a fresh reggae down to breakbeat, hip hop and gradation drum'n'bass as the girls were pulling ahead with their first sends.

the bronze Nelly Kudrova sending problem no.1

Apart from the three best girls the rest of them had apparent trouble even gaining the "zone" hold in the problems. The boulders were as usually built for the best. I have already visited Mejcup in 2006 and 2007 and it's pretty obvious the competition would stand even to the hardest international standards. When we saw the hollow profiles of female final boulders we were wondering what kind of void could be expected in the men's finals.

The second competitor Verka Kostruhova on top of the boulder no.2 and Katka Fickuliakova - the winner - fighting for the last top.

After the women's finals there was a break for new boulder problems to be put on the profiles. The audience went out from the hall to have a drink. A drink was apparently the main concern of cops who came to inspect whether drinks were consumed only by 18+ years old adults:

fucking hardboiled, right?! (pardon my French)

Also the media were attracted by this raid - pity it weren't the hardcore boulderists who draw them to Fleda tonight.
The Czech cops are simply hype in these days.

During the break between the women's and men's finals our crew was moving forward towards its inevitable destiny in the flat across the street from Fleda:

When we came back to the club the men's final was about to start!
Horomira and Jirmi were giving huge cheers to their friend Jirka Lautner who deserved such aplause for being the only true sandstone climber among other finalists. Eventhough Lautner was trying hard to reach at least one top the boulders were suited rather for the climbing prodigy Adam Ondra. The best Lautner's performance was applauded on the third boulder:

Adam Ondra was again the only finalist who sent all of the four final boulders. Here is his send of the last one [SORRY THE VIDS SIMPLY DON'T WORK HERE LIKE I WOULD LIKE THEM TOO]:

Adam Ondra is definitely a climbing genius but in opening the victory champagne and spraying the crowd under the stage he sucks. As Horomira put it: He hasn't learned it yet. I guess he was reffering to the previous two Mejcups in 06 and 07. Well he at the least opened it this year without help of Silva Rajfova. However he was the only one who climbed all the boulders in the finals. Martin Stranik scored third with two tops, only one "zone" behind the second super-tall Kuba Hlavacek.

The finals were over but that didn't count for Mejcup itself. A set of concerts was on featuring from Brno Cankisou, from Prague Tony Duchacek and some band with just a guitarplayer and drummer from - holy shit - New Zealand. Horomira and I decided to give the beer on Fleda for 27 CZK the deep six. So we went again directly to the night grocery next to Fleda and brno libre night was unleashed by then. You don't know what it means? Well it's just rum and kofola [quite similar to coke only spiced with liquorice] - the best drink in the world.

The party was high and I think we had enough fun before we went to bed in the very early morning. Just watching the czech bouldering and climbing aces partying like hell became a cheerful occasion to have a good laugh. Okay I'm kidding, we were also bloody pissed:

Horomirek and me managed to score a picture with some of these climbing aces. I know - it doesn't look like the two us are truly a part of the picture. But believe me, this photo shooting had been previously arranged with all of the participants..

The thing is that Mejcup is a space where those who strive for a good result in the finals of the competition mingle totally with the rest of the boulderists as well as the audience and the party is sort of a shared experience. Bára talked to Martin Stráník, her friend from junior competitions and one of the best three in CZ.

I bet this conversation wasn't much appreciated by Sampon;-)

Shit, he's sweet. The only person having two portraits on my fresh blog attempt.

There was a lotta talk about the competition and both our as well as the finalists performance. We also checked the pics Horomirek had taken that day. He shot some reel cool ones.