Even the master of the impossible sometimes faces profane problems. “Get in, I still have to find a parking space,” Adam Ondra tells me when we meet two weeks ago at the agreed place in the centre of the northern Italian city of Trento. The 25-year-old Czech is one of the top stars of a sports festival to which he has travelled with his van from his hometown Brno.

Ondra has been pushing the limits of sport climbing for years. Already at the age of 13, he climbed a route with a 9a degree of difficulty on the French scale which is commonl in the sport climbing scene – which in the rating of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Association (UIAA) corresponds to a route in the eleventh degree. For comparison: Reinhold Messner mastered the seventh degree at his best times as a rock climber. At the end of 2016, Ondra succeeded the first repetition of the “Dawn Wall” route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, which is considered the most difficult big wall route in the world, in just eight days. In September 2017, he mastered an extremely overhanging route in a cave near Flatander in Norway – the world’s first 9c (twelfth degree in the UIAA scale). The climbing world bowed once more to Ondra, nobody doubted his rating.

After guiding Adam to the parking garage in Trento, where my car is parked too, we use the way back to the venue for the interview.

Adam, you’re climbing since you were a little boy. Can you imagine that one day you’ll get tired of it?

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There are people who seem to be able to override the law of gravity. Alex Megos is one of them. The 25-year-old German from the city of Erlangen is one of the best sports climbers in the world. At the age of 19, he was the first in the world to master onsight a route in the Spanish climbing area of Siurana in French grade 9a, which corresponds to eleventh grade according to the classic UIAA difficulty scale. For comparison: Reinhold Messner climbed the seventh degree in his best days. Onsight means that Alex simply climbed straight on without having got any information about the route beforehand. This coup opened the door to professional climbing for him. This spring, Megos added another highlight: He managed the first ascent of the route “Perfecto Mundo” in the climbing area Margalef in the northeast of Spain (see video below showing one of his failed attempts), his first 9b+ (according to UIAA scale a climb in the lower twelfth degree). A single route worldwide is currently considered even more difficult.

I met Alex Megos during the 10th International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Brixen, South Tyrol, where the big names of the mountain scene have been passing the mike to each other for years.

Alex, you are one of only three climbers in the world who have climbed a route with difficulty level 9b+. So you’re right at the front of the pack. How does that feel?

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The Netherlands are called so for good reason. The highest “summit”, the Vaalserberg near the town of Aachen, is only 323 meters high. Nevertheless you find “Oranje boven” also on the highest mountains on earth. Frits Vrijlandt is not a blank slate in the climbing scene. In 2000, he was the first Dutchman to climb Mount Everest from the Tibetan north side, later he became the second mountaineer from the Netherlands who scaled the Seven Summits, the highest mountains of all continents. At the International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Bressanone in South Tyrol, the General Assembly of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA) was held – and Vrijlandt was reelected as President for another four years.

Frits, a man from such a flat country is the head of all climbers worldwide. That sounds a bit strange.

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The Olympic flag is already there, the climbers will come in four years. Today Governor Yuriko Koiki presented at Haneda airport in Tokyo the flag with the Olympic rings which the Mayor of Rio had handed over to her at the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Brazil. In 2020 in Tokyo, sport climbers will officially compete for medals for the first time (one week before the Winter Games in Albertville in 1992, there was already a demonstration event won by German climber Stefan Glowacz). “Of course, as a competition climber I welcome this development in principle,” says Sebastian Halenke regarding the Olympic premiere. “Until now, climbing as a competitive sport is barely represented in the media and even within the climbing scene there are rather spartan reports on the competitions.” The 21-year-old climber from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, whose trademark is his red mohawk haircut, belongs to the World Cup’s top ten in the discipline Lead. In these competitions the participants have to climb a long, difficult route after only a brief glance at it as far as possible within a time limit and without falling.

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I haven’t yet Olympic rings under my eyes. But that will surely change in the next two weeks because of the time difference between Rio de Janeiro and here. But when the next summer games are pending in four years in Tokyo, again in a different time zone, there will be an additional reason to change the daily habits: Sport climbing becomes Olympic in 2020. This was decided by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). “I think, it’s absolutely cool,” tells me German top climber Thomas Huber. “We have to be open to it. Sport climbing is worthy of being included in the Olympic program, because the competition has developed positively.” The IOC decision could send a signal to young people.

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One of the best German female climbers has passed away. Marietta Uhden died of cancer at the age of 46 years during the night from Sunday to Monday. She had fought against the dreadful disease for years. Born in Munich, Marietta did gymnastics during her childhood. She was already 20 years old when she began sport climbing. The successes came quickly. In 1993, Uhden won her first of twelve German championships (ten in lead, two in bouldering). She became bronze medalist (lead) at the World Championships 1997 and, in 2000, the first German female sports climber who won the Boulder World Cup. In 2005, the “Steffi Graf of German sport climbing”, as Marietta was once called, ended her competitive career and turned to rock climbing again. “I love to go climbing out in nature,  to get along with a few things and to spend the night in the open”, Uhden then said in an interview. She set standards in rock climbing too: for instance in 2001, when she was the first woman worldwide to open a new route in the eleventh degree of difficulty (US 5.14b): “Sun in the Heart” in the Bavarian Alps. Marietta leaves behind her husband and a nearly five year old daughter. R.I.P.