Welcome to Behind The Wall, a weekly newsletter published every Saturday.
Usually, each week, I highlight the favourite things I’ve watched, read and listened to from the world of indoor and competition climbing.
But this week, I want to highlight my favourite media from 2024.
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The Olympics
Unsurprisingly, the year was dominated by the Olympics.
Climbing Gold interviewed several Olympians before the Olympics, including Piper Kelly, Sam Watson and Emma Hunt, Jesse Grupper and Natalia Grossman, Brooke Raboutou and Jenya Kazbekova.
Holly Yu Tung Chen wrote a great profile of Campbell Harrison and his journey to the Olympics. Campbell pulled out of the Oceania Continental Qualifier in 2019 as Australia locked down to be with his family and did not have a chance to qualify for Tokyo.
Janja Garnbret gave a rare, intimate interview for her sponsor, Adidas TERREX (produced by Glocelium and Louder Than Eleven), where she talked about the pressure she faces, choosing strength over being light and competing on her period.
After the Olympics many had questions about the routesetting. Olympic Boulder routesetter Olga Niemiec gave a frank interview on Climbing Curated about her journey to becoming an Olympic routesetter and the routesetting process at the Olympics.
Toby Roberts gave us a glimpse of what it takes to win a gold medal, describing his training up to Paris.
Kyra Condie and Campbell Harrison discussed Campbell’s feelings about competing at the Paris 2024 Olympics and how it compared to Kyra’s experience in Tokyo 2020.
John Burgman interviewed Janja after the Olympics for Climbing magazine and discussed her experience competing in Paris and celebrating with her close friend Brooke Raboutou.
The Testpiece Podcast also interviewed many Olympians, but this episode with Hamish McArthur stood out for Hamish’s reflections on what was needed for him to climb his best.
Video Journalism
We also got a collection of video essays focusing on climbing, which dug a bit deeper.
Matt Groom’s documentary Climbing Never Dies showed us what climbing training is like in war-stricken Ukraine and the struggles the Ukrainian athletes face.
The Netflix-style documentary series The Crux was released on National Geographic in partnership with the IFSC. It focused on the athletes looking to qualify for the Boulder&Lead combined format during 2023. The series was released in 4 parts, covering the qualification events from the Bern World Championship in 2023 to the Oceanic Continental qualifier.
Hannah Morris, who runs the biggest women-led climbing YouTube channel, created two video essays on how climbing gyms have changed and at the rise of climbing from an obscure outdoor sport to a replacement for the gym.
Jonathan Sin meets Tomoa Narasaki, and his video goes deeper into the challenges Tomoa has had as an athlete. Jonathan asked Tomoa about his experience in the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese selection process, and the comradery in the Japanese team, all during the warm-up for a session on Tomoa’s home spray wall.
Japanese Climbing content
A bunch of YouTubers went to Japan and shot content in the indoor gyms in Tokyo (there are 87 gyms in Tokyo alone). We got to see their perspectives on Japanese climbing gyms, including the infamous B-Pump Ogikubo.
Emil Abrahamsson tried “the hardest gym in the world” with Magnus Midtbø, comparing five different climbing gyms in Tokyo, and climbing with PewDiePie.
Magnus himself took part in The 1 competition in B-Pump Ogikubo, returning to climb at the worst-rated gym in Tokyo, which has now been rated as one of the best, and also climbed with PewDiePie.
We also got some videos from the Crispy Crimps YouTube channel, which is run by Marco, who works at B-Pump Tokyo and is sharing his journey to climb Ni Dan (V10) in his gym. He interviewed some of the routesetters at B-Pump Tokyo about why the setting is so hard, gave us a tour of B-Pump Tokyo from his perspective, and interviewed the strongest employee at B-Pump.
World Cup Coverage
The IFSC World Climbing Club behind-the-scenes series returned this year to the World Cup circuit. Matt Groom and the live stream team gave us recaps of the rounds and interviews with athletes and officials from the competitions.
The IFSC also launched the IFSC Lounge, hosted by Matt Groom and Jinni Xia (host of the That’s Not Real Climbing Podcast), which included interviews with guest athletes.
A highlight of the year was Alex Honold’s commentating on the Boulder finals at the Salt Lake City World Cup. His naivety and dry humour made him a fan favourite, and many hoped he would return for the Olympics.
The Prague Boulder World Cup was my favourite competition of the year, with some of the best settings of the year. The battle in the women’s final between Natalia Grossman, Naïle Meignan and Oceana Mackenzie was exciting to the last boulder.
We had the announcement that paraclimbing will be in the 2028 Paralympics.
Jinni interviewed Sebastian Depke, Paraclimbing Commission Chair, on the That’s Not Real Climbing Podcast about getting climbing into the Paralympics, the paraclimbing classification process drama at the Salt Lake City Paraclimbing World Cup and his 1000km journey to Innsbruck on a solar hand bike.
Kyra and Allison discussed the announcement and the continued growth of paraclimbing with Mo Beck, a two-time world champion.
Athlete YouTube pages
This year, we saw the rise and development of more YouTube channels by athletes.
Erin McNeice started a YouTube channel after the Budapest OQS event in June to share her thoughts on her performance in competitions and what her training is like.
Toby Roberts's channel went from strength to strength, with collaborations with Magnus Midtbø and sharing his training in Japan and an international training camp with an innovative one-minute format.
Madison and Zach Richardson’s channel also continued to grow and produce some awesome videos on a twice-a-week schedule, from footwork tutorials to breaking down their competition performances, and sharing their training with actionable tips and tricks.
2025 International Climbing Competition Tickets
While the 2024 season is over, and tickets for the 2025 competitions are already on sale.
- Studio Bloc Masters 2025 (Germany) 15 – 16 March 2025. Registration opens in February.
- Prague (Czechia) World Cup 7 – 8 June 2025. You can purchase tickets for the whole weekend already. Single-day tickets will be sold later.
That’s a Wrap
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Behind the Wall. Let me know what you think at behindthewall@insideclimbing.com or DM me on Instagram.
See you next week!
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