Adam Ondra Sends Neanderthal

Adam Ondra repeated Neanderthal 5.15b at Santa Linya, Spain, which was first climbed by Chris Sharma in 2009, nine years after he first tried it. In 2011, he tried one day, made it to the dyno second go, but the next day it was wet. In 2015, he tried for a week, but couldn’t link the dyno. “It felt too hard with two fingers in the pocket, and I had no idea how to squeeze my three fat fingers in,” Ondra said. In 2017, “I found better kneebars, figured out how to squeeze my fat fingers into the pocket and stuck the dyno on day one of the trip, only to fall off from the no-hand-rest above because a foothold broke.” In 2019, he stuck the dyno and fell higher again. “Last day of the trip, I fell off the dyno again. As the sun came, I had to go fast. It was an epic try, but hell – it felt good to be in the sun at the anchor.”