Inside Weekly: Japan Sees Pre-Olympics Climbing Boom

Due to a notable growth of interest in sport climbing in Japan, IFSC Secretary General Debra Gawrych and IFSC Marketing & Communications Director Anne Fuynel traveled to Japan on Friday to meet with broadcasters, sponsors, TV rights and marketing agencies.

Climbing is set to debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with Speed, Boulder and Lead all taking place. What climbers will attend has not been decided.

Meetings were held in Tokyo with IFSC rights-holder Synca Creations, Japan Airlines, IFSC new partner, and IFSC marketing agency in Japan, HDY, Hakuhodo. Among the topics discussed was the promotion of sport climbing in 2018.

IFSC Vice-President Sport/Events Kobinata Toru also met with the Secretary General and the Marketing & Communications Director, to work on various topics including sport presentation and Tokyo 2020.

Japan Airlines is now a partner of the IFSC! More information at ifsc-climbing.org ? @japanairlines_jal

A post shared by IFSC (@ifsclimbing) on Feb 5, 2018 at 3:47am PST

Finally, the Japan Bouldering Cup also took place last weekend in Tokyo, offering the IFSC representatives the opportunity to watch elite sport climbing athletes from Japan, soon to compete in the IFSC World Cups of 2018.

Watch top Japanese climbers Noguchi Akiyo and Tomoa Narasaki training in Kletterzentrum, Innsbruck. So much precision, body awareness, and elasticity: amazing.