EP - What Now the Olympic dust has Settled?
We were fortunate enough to have a chat with Tiphaine Lazard, Marketing Manager for EP Climbing (formerly Entre-Prises). We talked all things Olympics, what is coming in their holds catalogue, and a new global bouldering competition!
Paris 2024
Obviously the first thing we wanted to know was how the Olympic Sport Climbing event went in the eyes of EP. From their viewpoint the event couldn’t have gone better; the build went very smoothly, the setters did an amazing job, and they worked in collaboration with a British company which built the visually impressive, and temporary, tent structure enveloping the stage.
We commented on how clean the steelwork of the lead wall looked when compared with the immense scaffold creations of previous generation temporary WC walls; EP has obviously made a concerted effort to improve the wall structure and is also demonstrated in recent WC rounds.
Tiphaine was keen to point out that EP is making great progress towards sustainability in everything they do; from hold manufacturing and partnering with Greenholds - or GHold, to being able to calculate the carbon footprint of all their projects.
With this in mind we questioned what has now happened to those walls used for the Olympics, have they ended up in a landfill or have they been rehomed?
The warm-up venue at Le Bourget will be renewed as a commercial ‘legacy’ climbing gym located within the Marie Paradis Gymnasium - named after the first woman to summit Mont Blanc. The competition walls are also getting second lives; the Speed and TITAN bouldering walls have been sold on to customers and the lead wall is currently in storage awaiting a new home - get in touch with Tiphaine if you want a piece of Olympic history in your climbing gym!
Images Copyright IFSC/Lena DrapellaFuture of The TITAN
EP has found commercial success with its TITAN bouldering wall, a template wall which can be a standalone feature (Parthian London) or incorporated into a wider wall design (WYN Skillpark). We wanted to know what future plans EP has for the TITAN and they’ve definitely got something big coming for 2025!
Some of you may remember when in 2017 Moon Climbing hosted a global competition - The MoonBoard Masters - both to unveil the new 2018 MoonBoard set, and to draw new climbers to the digital training board. Five big name climbing duos in Sheffield (obviously), NYC, Barcelona and Osaka competed on the same board problems at the same time.
EP will be taking this concept and stepping it up a notch with the TITAN wall and several to-be-named host venues to run a streamed and identical competition, we can’t wait to see how this develops, who the setters are and which gyms will be hosting.
EP Catches up in the Holds Game
We were keen to discuss holds and how EP has notably improved its offering post-covid. Callum talked about how he had recently used the Barchan macros whilst setting the finals for the LDN Big Comp at HarroWall, the open-handed nature of the holds made for fun and subtle body movement, and especially risky moves for juniors and their smaller hands! Also just announced was the range of Mini Macros - a complementary range of jibs made with recycled and recyclable plastic to go along with their larger counterparts.
Their range of volumes has also expanded with the addition of Nerve and Skinny families; simple shapes that offer setters plenty of movement and experimentation. On the subject of volumes, EP USA is manufacturing its Sweet range of curved wooden volumes, we asked if these would be making their way across the Atlantic to European gyms. Tiphaine explained that there is currently a push to standardise the EP Holds catalogue globally, the Sweet range is definitely something they want to include once efficiencies can be made in their production - apparently they’re quite heavy!
A Little Teaser…
The IFSC recently announced that Brazil will be hosting South America’s first World Cup event - the Curitiba Bouldering WC 16th-18th May 2025. We couldn’t resist asking Tiphaine if EP will be the wall builder for this special event: Of course EP has bid for the contract but tenders are still open and we will have to wait and see for the result.
We hope that whoever wins the build contract captures the vibrancy of Brazil, which always puts on one hell of a show.
