Japan's Miho Nonaka overcame sweltering heat to win the women's bouldering gold medal in sport climbing at the World Games on Friday, as Japan secured four of the six medals on offer.
Kokoro Fujii won the men's silver medal, and World Games defending champ Yoshiyuki Ogata the bronze. Mao Nakamura won the women's bronze medal at the games for a wide variety of mostly non-Olympics sports.
Nonaka, last summer's Tokyo Olympics silver medalist, was the only climber to conquer three of the women's final's four problems. Slovenia's Katja Debevec was second.
"I'm very happy. It's meaningful to win a tournament with a similar atmosphere to the Olympics," said Nonaka, who was second at the last World Games five years ago.
Nonaka displayed her great physicality and discipline when she held back, having to compete in the morning preliminaries and the evening final with the temperature at the outdoor venue above 30 C.
"It was hot, and my strength would have been sucked out of me had I climbed as much as I possibly could. I had good self-control," said Nonaka, who received a huge cheer from the crowd after topping the final's first problem, which only one other climber had solved.
Fujii found his way to the top on all four of the men's problems in the final but so did Belgian winner Nicolas Collin, who edged Fujii to the top step of the podium by virtue of needing fewer attempts.
"It got harder to turn things around as things progressed toward the end. The first problem decided it," said Fujii, who needed four attempts on the problem to Collin's one.
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