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Climbing at 2024 Paris Olympics: How it works, Team USA stars, what else to know

chris bumbaca and sandy hooper, usa today
·3 min read

Here’s what you need to know about climbing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

When did climbing become an Olympic sport?

Climbing debuted at the Tokyo Games of 2021. Prior to that, the sport first made it onto the Olympic radar at the Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games in 2018.

Climbing’s addition, along with skateboarding and surfing, was part of a movement to expand the program to include more urban sports with a focus on attracting more popularity among younger people. Sport climbing will remain on the program for the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics.

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How does Olympic climbing work?

Olympic sport climbing is broken down into three disciplines: bouldering, speed and lead.

Bouldering: Athletes ascend up a 4.5-meter wall (nearly 15 feet) without ropes in a limited period of time and in the fewest attempts possible.

Lead: Climbers go as high as they can on a 15-meter wall (nearly 50 feet) in six minutes in a single attempt.

Speed: One-on-one elimination rounds and also a race against the clock, climbers scale a 15-meter wall with a five-degrees incline. The best athletes can do it in less than six seconds for men, and the top women typically break seven seconds.

Sam Watson of the United States celebrates after winning the gold medal during the men's speed final climbing event during the Pan American Games Santiago 2023 at the Climbing Walls of the Cerrillos Park in Santiago on Oct. 22, 2023.
Sam Watson of the United States celebrates after winning the gold medal during the men's speed final climbing event during the Pan American Games Santiago 2023 at the Climbing Walls of the Cerrillos Park in Santiago on Oct. 22, 2023.

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What is different about these Games compared to Tokyo is that speed climbing has been separated into its own event, while bouldering and lead remain combined. This structure allows climbers to focus on their specialties.

The scoring system is also different from the one used in Tokyo. The scores from each discipline during the 2021 Games were multiplied by each other to achieve a final score. But with speed climbing out of the equation, the new judging outlook for bouldering and lead involves a maximum of 200 points. Climbers score points in bouldering by advancing up the wall through various "zones" (5 points for the low zone, 10 points for the high zone) and for reaching the top hold (25 points). Points are deducted for attempts, and a perfect bouldering round of flashing four boulder problems is worth 100 points.

In lead, athletes score by successfully holding the top 40 holds – the number of points scored for each hold will increase as they move higher on the wall. If an athlete moves toward the next hold but fails to securely hold it, they will be awarded 0.1 points on top of their previous score.

Twenty men and 20 women compete in bouldering/lead.

In the speed discipline, there are 14 competitors for both men and women. All climbers participate in two speed runs (on two different walls). They will then be ranked 1-14 based on their fastest time, which will decide the matchups for the elimination rounds to follow.

Top Team USA athletes for climbing at 2024 Paris Olympics

  • Sam Watson: With a time of 4.79 seconds, Watson, 18, currently holds the men’s speed world record holder. He finished 2023 ranked eighth in the world in men’s speed and won gold at the Pan American Games in Santiago last year.

  • Natalia Grossman: She finished last year ranked No. 1 in women’s boulder, and fifth in the combined boulder & lead category. Grossman took gold in boulder & lead at the Pan American Games.

  • Brooke Raboutou: Finished fifth in Tokyo and is the daughter of former climbing world cup champions Robyn Erbesfield-Raboutou and Didier Raboutou, who hails from France (Brooke speaks fluent French).

Top international athletes for climbing at 2024 Paris Olympics

  • Slovenia's Janja Garnbret, the reigning women’s gold medalist, is back and will be competing on the lead/bouldering side.

  • Poland’s Aleksandra Miroslav will be one to watch on the women’s speed side, and Ai Mori of Japan is a force in women’s boulder/lead.

  • In men’s speed, Indonesia’s Rahmad Adi Mulyon and Veddriq Leonardo will challenge Watson for the podium.

  • Jakob Shubert of Australia is a four-time world champion and a podium contender in men’s lead/bouldering.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Climbing at 2024 Paris Olympics: How it works, what to know