Speed, lead, bouldering: Why you should watch Olympic sport climbing at Tokyo 2020 (2024)

Sport climbing will have its first Olympic champions this week, as40 athletes compete in the debut sport’s three distinct disciplines to muscle their way to the top of the combined event podium.

The sport will be undoubtedly be a fascinating watch, and not just for its novelty on the Olympic stage. Competitors will showcase speed, strength, and endurance, as well as physical and mental agility, as they climb in the triad of event disciplines.

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Two Canadian climbers – North Vancouverites Alannah Yip and Sean McColl – are among the 20 women and 20 men competing at Tokyo’s Aomi Urban Sports Parkto medal in their respective events.

HOW IT WORKS
Athletes will compete in speed climbing, bouldering and lead climbing in both a qualification and final phase (if they make it to the latter). Their rankings in each of the three disciplines will be multiplied for a combined ranking, and the eight climbers with the lowest rankings will progress to the final phase.

Imagine someone was first in speed, second in bouldering and third in lead climbing – their combined ranking would be six. After the final phase (points aren’t carried over from the qualification phase), rankings are againmultiplied, and the climbers with the lowest results ascend to the podium.

Speed is a race to the top of a 15-metre climbing wall. It’s actually going to be the fastest event in the Olympics, according Team USA sport climber Kyra Condie. She shared that fact ina video posted by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), explaining that a good speed climbing time is between seven and eight seconds for women. For men, said Team Canada’s McColl, it’saround six seconds.

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Bouldering sees climbers working to solve the most “problems” (meaning, scale 4.5-metre boulders) in the fewest attempts. You won’t see competitors using safety ropes in this discipline, so falls will land them on protective mats below.The course will have a set number of “problems” and climbers will have a limited amount of time to spend on each. And they don’t get to see the problems until competition time, so the challenge is mental as well as physical.

Lead is about climbing as high as possible on a 15-metre wall within a six-minute time frame. The athletes will also have six minutes to study the wall before the climbing starts. And they only have one shot at it – if they fall, the height they got to is recorded. If multiple athletes make it to the top, or finish at the same height, speed determines victory.

CANADIAN COMPETITORS
Yip, 27, and McColl, 33, were climbing together long before joining Team Canada as its inaugural competitors in the sport (it was confirmed in 2016 for the Tokyo program, one of five new sports at the 2020 Games.)

The athletes are family friends, and McColl – who discovered the sport at age 10, according to his Canadian Olympic Committee bio, and was regularly competing within the year – introduced Yip to climbing. She fell in love with it, she told reportersafter a training session in Tokyo.

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Like running, jumping and throwing, “Climbing is one of the fundamental human movements,” Yip said. “So I’m really excited for the world to get to see such an amazing sport. I hope that a lot of people go out and subsequently try it.”

Both sport climbers joined the IFSC World Cup circuit as young adults. While Yip’s early focus on the circuit was bouldering, the 27-year-old competed full-time in all three disciplines in 2019. She punched her ticket to Tokyo with a first-place finish in the combined event at the 2020 Pan-American Championships.

McColl qualified for the Olympics with a 10th-place finish in combined at the 2019 IFSC World Championships, which he’d won four times previously. He’s the only athlete in the history of the IFSC with a top-eight World Cup finish in all three disciplines, his bio says, but it’s lead climbing where he’s won most of his 34 World Cup medals.

McColl was also part of the push to get sport climbing in the Olympic Games, making presentations to the IOC in his longtime role as president of the IFSC athletes’ commission.

There federation describes the last two decades as a period of “spectacular growth” for sport climbing.Its addition to the Tokyo 2020 program, and plans to host sport climbing as well as skateboarding in temporary urban venues, were celebrated by the IOC “as a historic step in bringing the Games to young people and reflecting the trend of urbanization of sport.”

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ATHLETES TO WATCH
The combination of speed, lead and bouldering into a single Olympic event is actually quite controversial. Prompted by IOC-imposed medal limits, Reuters reports that some of the world’s leading specialized climbers were left unable to qualify for the Games.

Sport climbing favourites, according to Reuters, includeCzech climber Adam Ondra on the men’s side and Janja Garnbret of Slovenia on the women’s –– though the latter event is considered more open.

At the 2019 sport climbing world championships (the last time the event was held), Japan’s Tomoa Narasaki took gold in the men’s combined event, while Austrian Jakob Schubert and Kazakhstan’s Rishat Khaibullin claimed the silver andbronze,respectively.

On the women’s side, Garnbret was the gold-medal winner (her second consecutive world championship title in the combined event). Japan’s Akiyo Noguchi tooksilver, and thebronze went to Shauna Coxsey, of Great Britain.

WHEN IT ALL GOES DOWN
The qualification phase for the men’s event will happen Aug. 3, with speed at 4 a.m., bouldering at 5 a.m. and lead at 8:10 a.m. (all times Eastern). Those time slots will remain the same for the women’s qualifier on Aug. 4. For the men’s and women’s finals on Aug. 5 and Aug. 6, respectively, speed will start at 4:30 a.m., bouldering at 5:30 a.m. and lead at 8:10 a.m.

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