As a Brit living in Tokyo, watching the Olympics every four years on Japanese TV can be tough as they naturally tend to focus on their own competitors who have a chance of winning a medal. Unless it’s in athletics, swimming or gymnastics then watching a British athlete win gold on live television here is quite rare and I can only remember seeing it once in the last Olympics.

In August 2024, Tony Roberts won Olympic gold in bouldering and presumably I only ever got to see this happen because there were some Japanese competitors involved! I can’t say I knew too much about the sport before then (I still don’t!) but with the Japanese involvement I ended up seeing a fair amount of the competition unfold.

Many people often turn their noses up a bit at the sight of new sports being added to the Olympic Games as was the case with golf, rugby sevens, skateboarding, surfing, breaking and sport climbing all being added to the bill for the last three Olympics in Rio (2016), Tokyo (2021) and Paris (2024).

Sports climbing (included bouldering) actually made its debut at the ill-fated Tokyo 2020 Olympics which took place in 2021 due to the global pandemic. In recent years I’ve been trying to sample as many new sports as possible (within budgetary reasons of course!) and that has included urban sports like skateboarding and breaking.

Komazawa Indoor Ball Sports Field on a sunny morning

When I noticed there was a bouldering event taking place in Tokyo, I was interested so I cycled down to Komazawa Olympic Park in Setagaya ward which is about an hour away from the Tokyo Fox Global Operations Centre in Itabashi. The park includes a range of sports facilities including an athletic stadium (used in the 1964 Olympics), a gymnasium (including a free Olympic museum) and an indoor sports field which was where this bouldering competition took place.

Boulder Japan Cup 2026 began at 9:00 am last Sunday (1st February) with semi-finals in the morning and the final in the afternoon. The latter was far more than I wanted to pay (around 6000 yen!) and I was otherwise engaged then anyway. The semis were within my budget at 2000 yen which is a price I’m happy and willing to fritter away on just about any event that I’m curious about.

Eight climbers compete on the same wall consisting of eight different problems (a sequence of moves to overcome) and they have five minutes to make it to the top. For the record, I didn’t know this beforehand and it took me a few rounds to work it all out.

What was impressive to me was the flow and efficiency of the competition where time was never ever wasted. 15 seconds of cleaning by the officials was instantly followed by the start of the next five minutes which included four competitors running out of the two entrance points. They’d also usually wipe the boulders too and maybe analyze the wall in front of them ahead of multiple attempts to try and get to the top. I’ve no idea if it’s always this efficient at other bouldering events around the world or whether it’s just typical Japanese style.

With no schedule or list of competitors in front of me, it took me a while to realise it was the same group of competitors rotating with another group of eight. They moved one climb to the right on the wall each time.

A gentle but constant dance beat was played out through the PA system for the duration of the competition. That didn’t bother me but hearing the noisy chit-chat of the three guys doing the commentary did irk me a bit as it added very little beyond the introductions of the competitors and a few other insights. Hearing them constantly shouting ganbare (keep it up) was rather annoying.

The crowd in attendance was more than I anticipated, and they reacted with great excitement each and every time a climber made it to the top. The best athletes make it look relatively easy but as someone who’s tried it a couple of times on the most basic of walls, I know how hard it is and how much upper body strength is needed.

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