adidas Women's Climbing 52min Show

Female Climbing Heroes

Shauna Coxsey (GBR), Miho Nonaka (JPN) and Petra Klingler (SUI)

Sport climbing is booming. Worldwide, this fast-growing sport enthuses over 35 million people and it’s even set to make its Olympic debut in Tokyo 2020. Year after year, new climbing gyms are built on all continents. The discipline of bouldering, which is unroped climbing above padded mats, primarily enjoys an increase in popularity, most notably among girls and young women. That’s easily explained. Climbing is a sport where men and women meet at eye level. Women have no physical disadvantage, shortness and less muscularity can be compensated by lower body weight, better flexibility and gymnastic talent. In competitions, women climb as powerfully and dynamically as men and wow the crowd with their elegance.

Three extraordinary women, all virtuosos of this sport and the heroes of an entire generation of female climbers, are presented in this film: two-time Overall World Cup Champion und current world number 1, Shauna Coxsey from Great Britain, the reigning Bouldering World Champion Petra Klingler from Switzerland, and the Runner-up World Champion and World Cup Silver Medallist 2016, Miho Nonaka from Japan. 

Mélissa Le Nevé (FRA), Nina Williams (USA), Shauna Coxsey (GBR) and Petra Klingler (SUI)

The Forêt de Fontainebleau in France, one of the largest forest areas in Western Europe, is the biggest and most developed bouldering area in the world. “Font”, as this climbing Mecca with perfect grey sandstone rocks is often called, is regarded as the cradle of bouldering, which is climbing without a rope above padded mats. The magical bouldering destination is home to one of France’s most famous female climbers - Mélissa Le Nevé. In 2016, she quit her competition career to solely focus on outdoor climbing. Le Nevé is the first woman to have climbed the technical grade 8B+ at Fontainebleau – a globally respected achievement, because the rock in this forest is said to teach humility.

The American pro climber Nina Williams from Boulder, Colorado is also famous within the community, because her specialty are high balls, boulders that are too high to safely jump down. Climbing highballs is rather a masculine domain in this sport. Williams attained worldwide attention with her first female ascent of Ambrosia, a 50-foot highball in Bishop, California. The two passionate outdoor climbers visit two of the world’s best competition climbers, Overall World Cup Champion Shauna Coxsey (GBR) and World Champion Petra Klingler (SUI) at the World Cup in Vail and escape with them afterwards into the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. After months of training and competitions on plastic holds, they enjoy getting their hands on natural rock again.