South Korea took the top spot in Fukuoka, Japan winning the IFSC Nations Grand Finale in the Lead discipline.

Boasting a team that included Lead world champion Dohyun Lee and World Championship bronze medallist Chaehyun Seo, South Korea beat Japan, Israel and the USA in the final.

Coached by Seoyoon Joo, climbers Chaeyeong Kim and Hyunseung Noh joined Lee and Seo in the mixed format competition with 17-year-old Kim the last climber out onto the wall for the pressure climb.

Kim took advantage of the strong performances of her teammates to climb past the 161.5pts total mark set by Japan and eventually taking her team score up to 167pts for the win.

After taking first Seo told the crowd: “I’m very happy and I’m really proud of our team, we did really good. We had a lot of fun here.”

Asked the key to the team winning, world champion Lee simply said: “Strong fingers.”

The final climber Kim said: “We felt after the competition we came closer to each other, so it was fun.”

Japan fell just shy of the win in front of their home crowd with a team that featured, Sorato Anraku, Satone Yoshida, Miho Nonaka and Natsuki Tanii, and coached by Yuka Kobayashi.

It was the duel on route one between South Korea’s Seo and Japan’s Nonaka that proved the decisive pairing as all other match-ups reached the same point on their respective routes. Seo reached hold 38 and Nonaka reached hold 32.5.

The fight for third came down to just 0.5 of a point with Israel the team taking the podium ahead of the USA.

Coached by Simon Trabykin, climbers Adi Bark, Maya Dreamer, Alma Sapir Halevi, and Tomer Yakobovitch scored a total of 135.5pts beating the USA who scored 135pts.

Team USA, featuring Vail Everett, Declan Osgood, Paloma Slowik, and Zoe Yi, and coached by Alvaro Rangel, had held a 0.5 point advantage after the first climb, but Israel overturned the deficit to claim third.

South Korea, Japan, Israel and the USA all came through the qualification round the day before with Australia and Canada eliminated at that stage as the bottom two teams.

Boulder Qualification and Elimination Heat

On the first day of competition the six teams began their quest for the Boulder title by taking on the Boulder Qualification round which consisted of two men’s boulder, two women’s boulder and a ‘mixed’.

Two men from each team climbed the men’s boulder, two women climbed the women’s, and then the coach choose one man and one woman to take on the mixed.

From the six teams, two would advance straight to the Final and the other four would enter the Elimination Heat where another two teams would advance.

Sorato Anraku, Sohta Amagasa, Mao Nakamura and Miho Nonaka competing for Team Japan scored a near perfect 249.7pts out of a possible 250pts giving them the top spot and a day off from Boulder.

Japan was joined by Israel’s team of Adi Bark, Maya Dreamer, Oren Prihed, Alma Sapir Halevi who took second with 233.9pts. South Korea, featuring Dohyun Lee, were third with 189.3pts and would have to climb again in the Elimination Heat.

Making a tactical move, maybe with Lead in mind, South Korea replaced Lee and lined up Chon Yejun, Jung Yejin, Noh Hyunseung, and Oh Gayeong, but they did more than enough to move into the Final from the Elimination Heat in first place with 219.8pts.

The fourth and final team that would stay in with a shot of the podium was the USA. Vail Everett, Declan Osgood, Paloma Slowik, and Zoe Yi scored 189.2pts and edged out their North American rivals Canada who scored 183.4pts.

Speaking after the round Slowik said: “It was super fun. I really enjoyed climbing with my teammates and going back and forth with beta.”

On the team’s game plan for the Final Slowik said: “We just have to try as hard as we can. We need to make sure we communicate well, like who is brushing and things like that, but it’s just about trying hard like we did this round.”

Having to go through an extra round of competition compared to Japan and Israel, Slowik thought there was good and bad: “Experience wise it has been great for me because I get to get on more boulders and that’s always exciting, but skin wise, not so much. But I’ll recover and tape up if I need to. Head set and mental wise though, I think it has helped a lot.”

The Canadian team of Riley Doherty, Hugo Dorval, Matthew Rodriguez, and Babette Roy and Team Australia featuring Judith Carroll, Maxim Pare, Dylan Parks, and Roxy Perry will watch to see which of the four remaining teams will claim the title after their exit.

RESULTS

All the results can be found at https://ifsc.hopp.to/ngfresults

WHERE TO WATCH

All elimination heat and final rounds in Fukuoka will be live streamed on the IFSC YouTube channel, with restrictions that may apply according to the territory.

News and updates about the event will be available on the IFSC website and across the Federation’s digital channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X, and exclusively for the Chinese audience, Douyin, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu.