Climbing in the Olympics, how does it work?

olympia, olympic games, olympiad-1535220.jpg

Climbing conundrum of the Olympics confusing you?  

You are probably not alone. I mean, how did it even get there? You had heard ‘sport climbing’ was neither, right? 

Doh! That was a joke by the way, not my view or even my joke actually. I stole it from the tinterweb. We will cover it another time though. But for now; 

This Olympics sees 3 new ‘sports’, all of which got a fair amount of resistance from their respective communities regarding their inclusion. It’s long been argued that Climbing, Skateboarding and Surfing are not ‘sports’ and therefore should not be in the Olympics.  That’s an old skool, staunch traditionalist view, one that probably deserves discussing in a full post later. I can see both points of view though. As an aside, it was interesting to see that the average age of the female competitors in the finals of the street skateboarding was 13! 

But anyway, climbing, what’s going on? Why has Shauna Coxey got her stopwatch out, and is Ondra going to crush everything he attempts? 

I really don’t know, I mean the dude is a beast, his neck is long enough to give him a head start on the speed climbing for sure. That was a low blow, sorry llama, I mean Ondra.  I am just jealous. He is younger, stronger and more talented than I am. In fact, he is more talented and stronger than I EVER was and he comes across as a really nice bloke, probably nicer than me as I am giving him some stick. He is obviously more intelligent than I am as well! He speaks 5 languages fluently and has a degree in economics. Damn, I am going to stop bigging him up, it’s depressing me.  I can match him on the youth thing though, I was young once.    

Anyway, climbing poses an interesting conundrum for the competitors given that all of the athletes will be competing in something comparatively new to them, by Olympic standards anyway.  

The format sees one climber compete in 3 disciplines.  The thing is, unlike old Daley Thompson who always trained the ten elements of the decathlon, most, if not all of these climbers will have never really tried some of these styles. The speed climbing is the biggest spanner in the works.  

First let me explain the format somewhat.  

Each climber will compete in Bouldering, Lead climbing and Speed climbing.  

This is how they will score each  

Lead: Climbers climb a 15-metre route with a 7-metre overhang. Each hold on the wall represents a point, the higher you get the more points you get. You get one attempt. When you fall, you are done, that’s it.  

Bouldering: The boulder wall is 4-metres high. Each climber gets 4-minutes to try to reach the top hold and securely grasp it. The more attempts it takes you, the more it costs you in points. First and foremost, the more top holds you reach the better your score will be. Then the case of how many attempts it took you is accounted for.  After that, it’s the amount of ‘score zones’ you reached. They are basically getting close to the top but not making the last hold. Fairly simple, get to as many tops as you can in the least amount of tries.  

All good so far, but then we come to speed climbing. This is a weird beast.  Let’s also bear in mind that your final result will be your position placed in each event multiplied by each other. If you finish first in lead, second in bouldering but 10th in speed 1x2x10=20, your final score will be 20. Points don’t mean prizes here, you want as low a score as possible. You can see how just being bad at one of these events could cost you dearly in the final placements.  

So, speed climbing what’s that…? 

Speed: Get to the damn top, bloody quickly!  It’s run in a tournament style with 1v1 heats. Climb the route faster than the guy standing next to you and you advance on. Keep doing that through and the final and you win. Simples. Except it’s not. Let me explain:  

To the uninitiated this may all seem like ‘climbing’ and that it’s all the same, so get on with it.  However that is like saying football, rugby and basketball are played with a ball using your hands and feet and telling Ronaldo to just ‘get on with it’ as he packs down in the front row against Joe Marler!  

Adam ‘the llama’ Ondra, it’s universally agreed, is probably the best lead and indoor climber in the world.  He aint gonna win the speed climbing though! In fact, he had never even tried speed climbing until he was thinking about the Olympics a short while before he was selected. The same goes for Shauna Coxey our girl. The world record for the speed climbing route is 5.48 secs for men, set by Iranian climber nicknamed the ‘Asiatic cheetah’, Ondra’s (nicknamed the llama by all of us that are jealous of him) best time in comparison is something like 7.48 secs. It’s a big difference in a world of 10th of a second margins.   

Sure, Ondra can boulder, in fact he is the only male competitor to have won world cup titles in both lead climbing and bouldering. That alone shows you how different those two are, let alone the speed climbing.  Shauna Coxey, yeah, she is a beast as well, and yes, she can lead climb. She is not a ‘lead climber’ though, she is a boulderer and a bloody successful one at that.   

So, it’s fair to say that most of the lead climbers will have tried bouldering, but not specialised in it. It’s likely, in the scenario of Olympic athletes that all of the boulderers entering had competed in lead climbing before, like Shauna.  That’s not necessarily the case for your average punter in a bouldering gym or at Fontainebleau.  What is common though is that none of the ‘recognised’ climbers out there will have speed climbed before.  The difference is like asking England’s football team to play rugby against England’s rugby team. Whilst I think that would be an amusing spectacle, it’s rather slanted toward the rugby team to win.   

To understand why, you have to first understand what attracts climbers to climbing.  Not including the merits of, the places you get to travel to and the people etc, we haven’t got the time. Let’s just talk about the physical aspects. Climbing is like human chess. It’s about solving a mental and physical problem. It’s about working out that single move on the wall that will unlock the route for you, that will mean you can ‘send’ it and get to the top.  How your mate does it may be totally different to how you need to do it. Famous or particularly difficult, dangerous, or fun ‘chess puzzles’ are what attract climbers from all around the world.  

Even indoor climbing provides a regular supply of different routes and puzzles to solve. One thing I find quite often with people who don’t climb is that they don’t realise all the routes inside are changed regularly. So, when you see a climbing wall full of coloured holds making up a route, they will be totally different from 6 weeks ago. The wall will employ specialist ‘route setters’ who will come in and change the holds around every couple of months to make totally new routes to keep challenges fresh and keep climbers coming back. It wouldn’t be much fun otherwise.  

Speed climbing is the total anthesis of what 99% of people call climbing. Sorry if there any speed climbers out there I have offended. Don’t get me wrong, speed climbers are great athletes, but it’s not ‘climbing’ for me. 

You see, the speed climbing route has been standardised since the early 200’s when it was set almost by mistake by Frenchman Jacky Godoffee. Since then, the route has been the same, and I mean exactly the same, down to the tiniest of details kinda the same! 

This means people have been climbing the same thing, over and over and over again, for years, just to shave tenths of a second off their time to get to the top.  Imagine climbing the same thing week in week out. The same holds, the same shapes, the same movements zzzzzzzzzz.  

To me and most people I know that’s purgatory, boring as hell. I just don’t understand how anyone could keep it up, but I guess it’s no different to being a 100-metre runner, it’s all about your time. 

The standardised route allows people from all over the world to train on exactly the same route and compete purely on speed. It’s all about muscle memory and power and in a weird way the ability to not think. To switch that part of your brain off. It will probably make for the most entertaining spectator event of the three to be fair. It’s easiest to understand if you are a non-climber. Simply who gets to the top first. To be fair they look pretty crazy doing it as well. A lot like spiders on…well speed actually.  

So, the long and short of it is that the three disciplines are so different. Each climber will have never really trained at least one of them, most likely the speed climbing part. Of course, to win overall you need a good score in all three. It’s going to be interesting to see how some of the best ‘climbers’ in world perform when already under pressure, they have to turn their hands to alien event.  

One thing for sure, it’s probably going to be the only time you get to witness Adam Ondra blown clear out of the water in a climbing competition!