By Noam Ben Simon, Website Manager
The Olympics have come and gone and with it some truly amazing moments. Quan Hongchan shattered the Olympic women’s 10 meter diving record at only 14 years old; Yusuf Dikec won silver in the mixed 10 meter air pistol, all while looking like a secret agent; Simone Biles added four more medals to her collection; France was so gross that the triathlon almost turned into a biathlon, and more. All the games were an incredible experience for anyone watching, even for those who didn’t have any expectations coming in.
Others, however, did have expectations. Viewers of the 2020 Tokyo games may remember the problematic introduction of numerous sports into the Olympics, such as skateboarding and sport climbing. In particular, the absurd system used for grading sport climbing, in addition to it being combined with speed climbing, has been a serious point of contention in the climbing community since those Olympic games. For three years, the climbing community waited with uncertainty to see how these issues would be handled in Paris. Thankfully, as the games began, it seemed as though sport climbing would be taken more seriously and that the format would be closer to the expectations of competition climbing. To understand the importance of these differences, we must first understand what went wrong with Olympic climbing at the Tokyo games.
The first and most obvious fault in Tokyo was that the games combined boulder, lead, and speed climbing all into one event, with only a single podium for men and women each. Competition climbers only practice in the first two disciplines: bouldering, which is climbing short but challenging problems (the technical term used for short climbing routes) without a harness, and lead climbing, a long climb done with a harness. The scoring works similarly for both; one can earn up to a certain number of points in each competition and their final score is the total of both their lead and boulder scores.
Combining lead and boulder makes sense, but the Tokyo Olympics also threw speed climbing in along with them. No serious professional sport climber trains in speed climbing. An equivalent scenario would be making runners also practice a long jump in order to calculate their final score. Not only does it not make sense to include this extremely niche part of the sport into the competition, but doing so also forces the scoring to be calculated completely differently. Lead climbing and bouldering are both graded based on points achieved by reaching milestones in climbs, while speed climbing is graded based on time.
You may be wondering – how does one calculate time into their points? The answer is, they don’t. The way the Tokyo games decided to calculate such scores was by multiplying each athlete’s position in each discipline, using that as their final score. Final positions were assigned similar to how they are in golf, where the lower scores are ranked higher. Boulder and lead scores were calculated similar to how they are in regular tournaments, and speed climbing positions were established through a one-on-one tournament bracket. Does that confuse you? Welcome to the club, because it confused all of us familiar with sport climbing as well.
This absurd system made the results of the games highly suspect. It’s a bit difficult to explain the true absurdity without getting into a long-winded explanation of how scores were calculated, but as an example of how insane this system is – in the absolute final part of the event, the lead climb, Adam Ondra (CZE) was in first place and held that position comfortably by the end of the event. That was, until Jakob Schubert (GER) passed him by a few holds and topped out (finished the climb). Of course, that would seemingly mean that Ondra took home a comfortable second place, right? Wrong. Wrong and oh so naive. Because of his bump to second place in the final discipline, Ondra dropped from first place to sixth. Out of seven. And in his place, Schubert took first. Just kidding – that would actually make sense. Schubert took third. The scoring system absolutely robbed everyone of having a fair chance at placing on the podium. That is because earning a multiplier of even two in the wrong discipline destroyed any possibility of winning first place while getting first in another discipline and scoring barely above the average in the others allowed one to win.
Climbing is not about getting first in one sport and fumbling your way through the rest: it’s about being consistently good. Yet, the Tokyo Olympics awarded medals to those with unbalanced skill distribution and included the curveball of speed climbing, which further shook the bag. (In fact, the person who took gold was Alberto Gines Lopez (ESP) who got first in speed, seventh (last place) in boulder, and fourth in lead).
Now that we are all caught up with the trainwreck that was Olympic climbing at the 2020 Tokyo games, we can move forward and discuss the changes made for the Paris games. First, speed climbing became its own event! No longer were sport climbers forced to compete in this niche subcategory. Now, the roster of climbers in the Olympics reflected both the best in sport climbing as well as those specific to speed climbing. Veddriq Leonardo (INA) took home gold for men’s speed and Aleksandra Miroslaw (POL) took home the gold for women’s speed. This change was already a sigh of relief for climbing fans internationally.
One of the more underrated changes made to the games actually had nothing to do with the sport itself, but rather,with the commentary. The previous games had very poor commentary that made watching them feel as though the Olympics weren’t taking climbing seriously. While overcoming a confusing system is certainly possible, overcoming a lack of respect for your sport is another task entirely. In Paris, this too was rectified. Known and respected commentators – such as Matt Groom and Shauna Coxsey – were brought in and their conversations were high-level, showing an understanding of the game. While the commentating wasn’t perfect, as there were still some complaints akin to those we saw in the 2020 games, their commentating was a significant step forward from what we saw (or rather, heard) in Tokyo.
Finally, arguably the most important change made to this sport was to the scoring system. The scoring was calculated how every other sport climbing tournament is scored – based on points in individual climbs. There were four boulder problems, each awarding a total of 25 possible points. There was also a single lead route, with each hold worth points that steadily increased over the course of the climb, totalling to 100 points. Each half of the event was weighted equally out of 100 total possible points, with the highest possible score being 200 points.
The results were as follows: For men, in first came Toby Roberts (GBR): 155.2 (Boulder: 63.1; Lead 92.1), in second came Sorato Anraku (JPN): 145.4 (69.3; 76.1), and in third was Jakob Schubert (GER): 139.6 (43.6; 96.0). For women, in first came Janja Garnbret (SLO): 168.5 (Boulder: 84.4; Lead: 84.1), in second came Brooke Raboutou (USA) 156.0 (84.0; 72.0), and in third Jessica Pilz (AUT) placed with a final score of 147.4 (59.3; 88.1).
While there certainly were upsets in this year’s Olympics, such as Adam Ondra (CZE) only placing 6th out of 8, the scoring and formatting of the climbing event was not the issue. The Olympics are always going to have surprises and unexpected moments, but properly honoring and respecting the sports must always be prioritized over organizing the event. This year, the climbing athletes were able to compete at their highest level without grappling with new rulesets and unnecessarily complex scoring systems. In this Olympics, sport and speed climbing as Olympic events were truly debuted, both in how they were carried out in practice as well as in spirit. I look forward to seeing what the next Olympics has in store, with a new wave of climbers ready to give it their all.