Climbing is no easy feat. Although the activity is not often regarded as a sport, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is looking to change that. With the Summer Olympics only a few months away, there will be several new sports making their debut during this competition, and one of the newest added events is “sport climbing.” This will not only add another fun event to watch over the summer, but it will also have big implications for the competitive nature of the climbing world as a whole.
In the 2020 Olympics, this sport will feature three different disciplines: speed, bouldering and lead. The speed portion will involve two different climbers racing against one another to climb a route on a 12m wall. The bouldering portion will have athletes scaling a certain number of fixed routes on a 4m wall in a certain amount of time. Lastly, in the lead portion, athletes will climb as high as they can on a wall measuring over 12m within a specific portion of time.
Any athlete competing as a climber will participate in all three of the disciplines, and the final scores will be determined by multiplying the placement in each discipline. The climbers with the three lowest ranking scores will then receive Olympic medals.
While the addition of sport climbing to the 2020 Olympic roster is exciting for the community, it has also caused several debates. According to an article by National Geographic, the inclusion of speed climbing within the disciplines was highly criticized because it is really only a subset within the larger sport of climbing.
Furthermore, asking the Olympic climbers to participate in all three disciplines forces them to be all-around climbers, rather than rewarding the top athletes in their particular subset of climbing.
“This is groundbreaking for our community, yet I’m afraid it may be more divisive than constructive,” said junior and adventure leadership major Hunter Grady. “Though newer climbers have embraced the competitive side of the sport, older climbers have been resistant to call climbing a sport at all. They cling to their roots, when climbing was about trying hard and self-improvement.”
Despite the somewhat awkward format of the sport climbing category, it is still a huge step for the sport to get its foot in the door at one of the most well-known and prestigious athletic competitions in the world. Whether you support the setup of three climbing disciplines or have misgivings about the format, don’t forget to tune in as sport climbing makes its debut in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games on Aug. 4.
