Canberra has just represented Australia at the 2025 World Jump Rope Championships in Kawasaki, Japan, alongside 2,400 athletes from 34 countries and the results are in.

Considering the sheer scale of the event, Canberra did exceptionally well to gain fourth place in both the juniors’ single rope speed relay and wheel pair freestyle. The local team also claimed a fifth place in the Open Tournament for triple unders and sixth place in the double dutch single freestyle.

This is no schoolyard play but rather an elite comp with strict competition rules set by a world governing body.

Canberra’s Jazzy Jumpers sent 26 competitors (aged 12 and up) to the world titles, where 240+ judges were present.

Coach Lisa Buchanan said Canberra’s co-ed team trained three times a week in the lead-up to the comp.

“The difficulty level goes up depending on how many times the rope goes under your body as you do the tricks,” Lisa said. “They’re always coming up with new tricks to try, a bit like gymnastics. There’s new technology that’s coming out for the handles, trying to make it spin faster, less friction.”

This isn’t jump rope for amateurs, competitive jump rope pushes competitors to the limits with some athletes doing 113 skips in 30 seconds flat.

Jazzy Jumpers has been running for 15 years and the club competes regularly in international competitions. They also happen to hold several national jump rope records.

“We’d love to grow a bit more in Australia,” Lisa said. “It’s still quite a small sport and not a lot of people know about it. When you hear of skipping, they think maybe ‘jump rope for heart’, which is what people are familiar with from school. They don’t realise where it can go but I think as a country, we hold our weight overseas.”

Skipping clubs are springing up everywhere (a second club has just emerged in Canberra called Bluebell Skippers).

Jazzy jumpers is on Facebook.