Bridgeport, Pa. (WLVT) - Rock climbing is reaching new heights as a sport. For the first time ever, it will be an Olympic sport at the 2020 summer games in Tokyo. Now Reach Indoor Climbing and Fitness, a new gym that opened June 1 in Bridgeport, is hoping to help train Olympic sport climbers.
“It’s kind of like doing yoga, but with your full body,” said Ethan Bielefeld, a native of Columbus, Ohio who sometimes climbs after his summer internship in Montgomery County.
Rock climbing is one of the fastest-growing sports in America, with
50 new climbing gyms opening in 2018.“Rock climbers should be in the Olympics because it’s a sport,” said Lower Merion resident and casual climber Baylor Raffensperger. “I mean it takes endurance.”
“[Reach Climbing] is head and shoulders better than any gym I’ve been in,” said Bielefeld. “It felt like it was built by someone who really likes to climb.”
Reach has 20,000 square feet of wall space, enough to train for all three types of Olympic climbing.
“Speed climbing, bouldering and difficulty climbing,” said Reach owner Michael Feinberg.
In lead, or difficulty climbing, athletes climb as high as they can within 6 minutes. Bouldering is when climbers move across a lower wall (4 meters) without using a harness. And speed climbing pits two climbers against each other in a race up a specific 15-meter wall, which Reach has.
“So if someone were training for the Olympics you’d be able to do it here,” Feinberg said.
Reach is already getting involved in official climbing competitions, hosting more than 600 climbers July 11 to 14 for USA Climbing’s
Sport and Speed Youth National Championships.
“It was the first time the Philadelphia area had ever hosted a national level competition,” Feinberg said.
Reach is also open to casual climbers, who can rent equipment or take classes starting at the beginning level.
Meanwhile the competition is on to make it to the summer 2020 Olympics. The International Federation of Sport Climbing will hold Olympic qualifier events from now through the summer of 2020, including the Pan-American qualifier in Los Angeles Feb. 27 to March 1, 2020. And all through that time, Reach owner Michael Feinberg hopes some climbing athletes will be training right here.
