Pustelnik Lead setting report

Adam Pustelnik from Poland is the chief-route Lead setter in Tokyo. In his team he also has; Jan Zbranek (CZE), Hiroshi Okano (JPN) and Akito Matsushima (JPN), which have worked together both in Innsbruck this year and in the World Champion in 2019. There are also a couple of Japanese setters helping out with the training routes etc. (c) Daniel Gajda/IFSC

"We’ve had four days of setting before the opening ceremony and then we were working three more days during the 3x3 basketball games but that included preparing routes for the training sessions. To explain a bit more, for the main competition we set 4 routes in total - a qually and a final route for men and women. In addition, we prepared 4 routes for training sessions for the athletes on the FOP that means on the actual wall of the competition. Since yesterday they have had sessions of around 2hours to try out boulders, these routes and climb on the speed wall as a form of training on the main wall.

For the question on challenges, I would say that the job we’re doing does not really differ much from other competition. It’s always challenging to prepare things that will be attractive to see, showcase the best of climbing and give a good score. Of course, there’s a much bigger stake in this competition but this does not change the way we work as we always try to do our job the best we can. The difference is more about the combined format and a mix of climbers in the rounds but again we’ve already experienced that and tried our best for preparing the routes."