Adam Ondra is a 25-year old native of Brno, and one of the best professional rock climbers in the world. Ondra won his first medal of this year’s World Championship in Innsbruck on Sunday. Ondra specialises in lead climbing and bouldering. Photo credit: Pavel Blazek [CC BY-SA 4.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons.
Brno, Sep 11 (BD) – Ondra is often described as one of the world’s best rock climbers. He went into the World Climbing Championship in Innsbruck (Sept 6-16) as the reigning champion in lead-climbing and runner-up World Champion in bouldering. Ondra has only participated in one lead competition so far in the 2018 season, finishing fourth. “During the last month I have been preparing exclusively for Innsbruck and I’m feeling ready,” he said in a press release from the opening press conference at Olympiaworld in Innsbruck yesterday (“Adam Ondra, Jakob Schubert and Jessica Pilz can’t wait for the Climbing World Championships to start!”, 09/05/2018).
Yesterday, the local hope, 27-year-old Austrian Jakob Schubert, was crowned Lead World Champion 2018 in Innsbruck. Adam Ondra took silver and Alexander Megos of Germany took bronze.
Watch it on You Tube: IFSC Climbing World Championships – Innsbruck 2018 – Lead – Finals – Men
“Anyway, the silver is definitely good and I’m looking forward to the other disciplines. Bouldering is going to be very important, especially when it comes to qualifying, that is not going to be easy,” said Ondra, as reported in local Czech daily Brněnská drbna (“První placka je doma! Adam Ondra získal na mistrovství světa v lezení na obtížnost stříbro”, 09/09/2018). Ondra will start in all disciplines this year; in the coming days, he will take part in the bouldering, speed climbing, and the so-called “combined” discipline. The Combined competition has been accepted as a new discipline for the Olympics in Tokyo 2020.
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