WC #1 Jongwon Chon beaten by six Japaneses

Last year, Japan totally dominated the IFSC boulder World Cup scene with five guys in Top-8. The North Face Cup in Tokyo last weekend indicates that it might be an even stronger Japanese domination in 2018 as the WC winner 2017, Jongwon Chon was just #7 and WC #2 Tomoa Narasaki was not on the podium. Instead it was Kai Harada, #16 in the WC 2017, who won ahead of Fujiwaki Yuji. In 2017, Harada and Yuji was on average #24 based on 13 World Cups. This indicates of course that there just might be an even more extreme Japanese male domination in 2018. It should be mentioned that the format is a bit different with more boulders in the qualification and semi, also including two zones. In the final, they have a knock-out system. Yuji Hirayama explains; "I love knock out format, you can share the moment with everyone much more direct than IF format and this format is fair enough to select the champion. It is not making the ranking. We started knock out format since 1998." Among the female, Miho Nonaka won ahead of Akiyo Noguchi and Natsuki Tanii. Complete results in Japanese.