Alex Averdunk – Professional Climber

Latest News

- China Part 2 – Shanghai and World Cup in Tai’an
  May 18, 2018Video by Urs Stoecker Chongquing isn’t really the place you want to stay for longer than needed, so it was a good decision to leave to Shanghai for a couple of training sessions at Pongo before the next World Cup in Tai’an. I liked Shanghai a lot more than Chongquing. Food and Culture were more Western than in central China. After Training, we also did some Sightseeing and went on top of the Shanghai Tower, which is the second highest building in the world. A couple of days in Shanghai went by really fast and we already traveled to Tai’an to the next Stage of the IFSC World Cup. My shape already felt so much better than in Chongqing, I felt like I had more basic endurance. The competition went much better than the last one and I was quite happy with my climbing, but not really with my placement. It was really hot in Tai’an and unfortunately, I slipped after the crux move of the first boulder, which I later found out would have changed so much… I managed to climb the second boulder but wasted some attempts while doing so. The third boulder felt soooo close, but I could not figure out the beta for the top move in time and fell about four times on the very last move. The last two boulders were pretty straightforward and I was able to flash both of them. This made a pretty good finish, and I felt like I had a good score. It really surprised me when I found out I was placed 20. in my group and 41. overall. On the next day, I still had the speed competition. After the disaster in Chongquing, I really wanted to improve my time and show that my training had paid off. I still did some slight mistakes in my beta (missed the 3rd foothold by far as you can see in the video), but all in all my runs were really good and I was able to set a new personal best of 8.40 seconds. This really made me happy, and I hope I can reach sub 8 second soon. Video by Urs Stoecker The day after the comp, we also got the chance to try the boulders from finals, which was an awesome opportunity. Thanks a lot for that! It was so much fun and a great experience to get a feeling for a finals round. In the video above, you can see a quite different solution from Boulder M2.... Read more...
- China Part 1 – World Cup in Chongquing
  May 10, 2018Video by Urs Stoecker It took us easily 25+ hours of travel before we finally arrived in Chongquing. This city is just insane! It’s so huge, there are so many skyscrapers as far as you can see. Still, China is definitely not my favorite place to be. I did not really feel prepared enough for the comp as I got sick in Moscow and could not train for two weeks. This I had only two more sessions in China before the comp and could only do One rest day, while I usually prefer doing two rest days in front of a comp. In the competition, I wasn’t able to climb any boulder, but I fell on the Top move of boulders Two and Four. It wouldn’t have changed anything in a matter of missing semis, but at least I could have gotten some World Cup Points by reaching Top 30. Speed didn’t go better than Bouldering at all… I slipped two times in both attempts and thus had a really bad time. But I guess that’s part of the game in speed climbing. You have to learn to be really precise and concentrate 100%!... Read more...