Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson’s free climb of the Dawn Wall on El Capitan in 2015 was one of the most seismic achievements in rock climbing history. For 19 days, the pair grappled with this most iconic of big wall climbs, the first of its kind at the 9a (5.14d) grade. The climb and subsequent film captured attention way beyond the climbing world. Then, one year later, a 23-year-old Czech climber repeated the feat, free climbing the Dawn Wall solo in just 8 days. His name? Adam Ondra.
A prodigy widely held to be the finest climber of his generation, Ondra’s list of achievements is staggering. No one in the world has sent as many almost impossibly hard sport climbs, including Silence, the 5.15d (9c) route that may be the world’s most difficult. He’s simply prolific. Yet, Ondra doesn’t just dominate the world of sport climbing, he’s also one of the world’s best boulderers, as one of a handful of people who have climbed at the V17 grade, and one of the most decorated competition climbers too.
Here we delve deeper into his many remarkable achievements, highlighting his pivotal climbs and trying to put his many sends into some form of context. If you don’t know your Yosemite decimal system from your Font grades, check out our guide to climbing rating systems in order to make sense of the astounding difficulty of Ondra’s climbs.
Early life
Ondra was born in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second largest city, in 1993. His parents were both keen climbers and he began his acquaintance with the pursuit aged three, becoming enamored with technical sport climbing at a tender age. By eight, he’d onsighted his first 5.12c (7b+), a remarkable achievement. Onsighting is when a climber completes (or sends) a route at the first time of asking and without any prior knowledge.
He emerged as a rock climbing prodigy and by 13 had redpointed his first 5.14d (9a): Martin Krpan in Misja Pec, Slovenia. This grade is a significant milestone for climbers, one that was famously first achieved by the legendary Wolfgang Güllich on Action Directe in Germany’s Frankenjura in 1991. That Ondra was able to climb at this level, at just 13 years old, underlined his immense talent.
A sport climbing sensation
Ondra developed into arguably the greatest sport climber in the world. Since his first at the age of 13, Ondra has climbed more than 200 routes at the 5.14d (9a) grade or higher, more than anyone else in history. His ability to onsight or flash hard climbs is unrivalled, making short work of routes other climbers spend weeks or months on. In terms of grades, he’s broken new ground repeatedly, most notably on three specific occasions.
The first was when he redpointed Change in 2012. This 148ft (45m) overhanging route is found in the spectacular Hanshelleren Cave in Flatanger, Norway. It’s an area that Ondra has made a second home – he’s established several projects and sent a raft of impressive climbs in this magnificent, silent arena. When Ondra sent Change in 2012, it was the world’s first 9b+ (5.15c) and it has only been climbed three times since, by fellow elites Stefano Ghisolfi in 2020, Ondra's oft-climbing partner Seb Bouin in 2022 and Alex Megos in 2024.
The second major breakthrough was in 2013 in Oliana, Spain. La Dura Dura was a project of Californian sport climbing royalty Chris Sharma, a man who’d dominated rock climbing for decades. However, he was close to giving up on the route before a timely collaboration with Ondra. Together, they pieced together the puzzle of the 164ft (50m) limestone cliff and Ondra sent the route on February 7 – a true passing of the torch moment between the 31-year-old legend and the 20-year-old prodigy. It’d be another month and a half before Sharma achieved the climb, on 23 March 2013. The pair agreed on a consensus 5.15c (9b+), making it the hardest climb in the world at the time. It has not been repeated since.
Silence
Perhaps Ondra’s most important climb – arguably the hardest rock climb in the world – was in 2017 with Silence, a 148ft (45m) overhanging route that, like Change, is located in the granite Hanshelleren Cave in Flatanger, Norway.
Silence is a route up an almost impossibly steep section of the cave, with three difficult boulder problems at its crux. The sequence demands extreme precision, upside down climbing and an extreme drop knee to overcome it. To rest before unlocking the rest of the route, Ondra had trained his muscles to allow him to literally bat-hang. In fact, Ondra had parts of the climb replicated in a gym he had built nearby, just to train for the route.
Silence has yet to be repeated, though Italian climber Stefano Ghisolfi has repeated the crux. At the time of Ondra’s climb in 2017, it was the world’s first 5.15d (9c). He named the route Silence for the inner calm he felt while climbing it and for the vivid emotions he felt when he finally sent it.
Competition climbing
Ondra is one of the world’s most decorated competition climbers in terms of World Cup and World Championship wins. Only Austrian contemporary Jakob Schubert boasts more male titles on the competition circuit.
Ondra’s first adult gold came in 2009, when he won the Lead World Cup at the age of just 16. A year later, he became the first person in history to win the World Cup in both the Boulder and Lead disciplines. Through his career to date, he’s won seven World Cup golds and five World Championship golds, the latest coming in 2019 – a mightily impressive haul.
Ondra competed at both the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics, finishing in sixth place both times in the Boulder and Lead Combined events. Changes in competition bouldering since his World Cup victories in 2010 haven’t played to Ondra’s style and it’s thought that athletes who’ve developed alongside the new style are better suited to it.
It’s possible that, had climbing been an Olympic sport at London 2012 and Rio 2016, Ondra would have had a very good chance of winning some gold medals. Indeed, after the 2024 Games, Ondra admitted that he felt ‘bitter’ that his generation weren’t given the chance to compete on the world’s greatest stage back then.
Bouldering exploits
The hardest boulder problems in the world are graded at V17. Less than ten of these masterpieces of climbing have been successfully sent. They’re the preserve of only a handful of elite climbers. Among them, Adam Ondra.
In February 2025, after five days of effort, Ondra sent one of the original V17s, Soudain Seul, in the forest of Fontainebleau, the French region that’s thought of as bouldering's spiritual home. He’s since been back to this hallowed ground, flashing a number of impressive boulders and even attempting what might be the world’s first V18: Imothep Assis. This problem is a longtime project of local Bleausard (Fontainebleau climber) Camille Coudert.
In his Boulder Tour de Fontainebleau film (which you can watch below), Ondra had this to say of Imothep Assis: "I absolutely love it. I think it's the most motivating boulder I've ever seen."
