Girasko Aei Didaskomenos (7a+ / 5.12a) | Iera Odos, Athens

A first upload and a first edit, and the hornet is the reason to watch. Ilias Antonopoulos redpoints Girasko Aei Didaskomenos, a 7a+ at the Iera Odos crag on the western edge of Athens, after 25 to 35 attempts over two years, with Antonis Mantakas belaying. Around the five-minute mark, just after the crux, a hornet stings him in the ear. He keeps climbing.

This is for climbers who project at the grade most of us project at, and who rarely see that on film. The route opens on a crumbly slab, moves into pumpy terrain, and finishes with a boulder problem that twists into and out of a monodoigt pocket. The film shows the shakes before the crux, and they are audible. Skip it if you want polish. This is a person filming his own send at a city crag, and it looks like that.

What works is the community note. Local climbers bolt and maintain Iera Odos, and Mantakas climbed the line a week later. That context makes it a film about a crag rather than one send. What it gets wrong is length. Seven minutes for a route that took two years leaves the years out, and I wanted a minute on the falls.

Ain't No Sunshine, Angie Scarth-Johnson's 7c+ at Nowra, is the other small, self-shot send on the site. That one has a future star in it. This one has a hornet, and I know which I would rewatch.