Olympic Climbing

by Emile Johnston

This summer, on the third of August 2021, climbing made its debut as an Olympic sport. This is widely seen as a big step in the continuation of the growth of the sport, which has been acceler ating worldwide more or less since the second half of the twentieth century. Rock climbing essentially started to become a sport of its own in late nineteenth century central Europe, derived from alpinism. Yet it remained a niche activity until the 60s and 70s and has only quite recently been turning into a main stream sport. This is happening notably with the number of boulder ing gyms exploding in many places around the world, from Tokyo to New York.

What’s interesting is that the increasing popularity of the sport was influenced by quite a variety of factors which don’t affect most other sports. Perhaps most importantly, the gear used for protection and the safety standards of rock climbing have evolved a lot since its beginnings, thanks to new technologies and regulations. By today’s standards, much of the way climbing was practiced before the 60s would be considered almost suicidal. The fact that climbing is no longer that much of a dangerous sport means that you don’t have to be a bit of a daredevil to try it. Indoor climbing gyms make climbing simpler and safer – though somewhat less authentic – and most importantly it means that you don’t have to live near any rocks to practice regularly. This is good news for those who live in countries such as the Netherlands, which bears the curse of being completely devoid of any rock formation.

"Not only were most climbers forced to compete in two disciplines that they don’t usually train for"

This transition from an unconventional sport to a widespread one made climbing a logical candidate for the Olympic games. While this was easily agreed upon between the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the discussion was much trickier troversial – considering that controversies are usually very low-profile in the climbing world.

The three main disciplines in climbing, namely lead climbing (big wall, rope), bouldering (short wall, no rope) and speed climbing (go fast), were forcefully merged into one, because the IOC apparently could not afford more than one set of medals for each sex for the new sport. While combined rankings of the three disciplines do exist in the IFSC for the minority of climbers who are versatile enough to compete in all three, these rankings are always secondary to the rankings of each discipline. Not only were most climbers forced to compete in two disciplines that they don’t usually train for – it would be like putting 100m sprinters and marathon runners all together in the same set of races on the basis that it’s all ‘running’ – but each climber’s final score was the multiplication of their three rankings, with the smallest score being the best. This led to a system that seemed mathematically quite chaotic and rewarded performances in a strange, erratic manner.

The twenty men and twenty women who qualified for the Olympics were a mix of well-known athletes with a rich history of world cup podiums, as well as quite a few young prodigies. However, the one who stood out the most was undoubtedly Janja Garnbret, who just continued her two-year trend of winning everything that stood in her way, as she fulfilled her fans’ best hopes by placing herself way above all the other women in both the qualification and final ranking, and making it look pretty easy.

"he really wasn’t expecting to make it to the final, let alone to the podium"

The men’s side, on the other hand, was extremely chaotic. In the end, excellent climbers like Colin Duffy and Adam Ondra ended up at the bottom of the ranking for the final, while the winner, Alberto Ginés López, only ended up on the podium because he won the speed discipline by getting lucky in all three races. He had said in an interview that he really wasn’t expecting to make it to the final, let alone to the podium. This probably explained the confused look on his face during the medal ceremony, that seemed to be internally screaming “how did I get here??”. But I guess unpredictability is also one of the things that make sports so entertaining, after all.