The first Olympic climbing champion will be crowned on Thursday, when eight male climbers scramble up a series of walls in search of a gold medal.
Yet few of those taking part in the sport’s Olympic debut believe the winner will be the best climber in the world. “The term [itself] is a nonsense,” Czech competitor Adam Ondra told the Financial Times.
The 28-year-old, who is considered among the world’s greatest climbers, believes the sport’s appearance at the Tokyo Games is more of an opportunity for it to gain global recognition than a contest determining who is the best.
Ondra and his peers say the rules of the competition imposed by the International Olympic Committee misunderstand the nature of their sport.
Instead of a contest of pure climbing ability, the Olympics’ debut reflects the IOC’s desire to showcase a series of new entrants into the Games, such as skateboarding, BMX freestyle and surfing.
The effort to expand the Olympic programme is a reaction to younger viewers’ lack of interest in many of the Games’ traditional sports, such as swimming and Greco-Roman wrestling, in favour of other entertainment offerings from Netflix and YouTube.
That trend represents a threat to the IOC’s broadcasting rights, which made up the bulk of revenues worth $5.7bn in the four years running up to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The climbing at Tokyo’s Aomi Urban Sports Park is taking place amid bright lights and a thumping soundtrack of dance and heavy metal music. Commentators on loudspeakers eschew impartial analysis in favour of screaming platitudes such as: “Come on!”
Amid this din, athletes must focus on three tests. The first is “speed”, a vertical sprint up a 15m high wall set at an angle of 95 degrees. The made-for-social-media spectacle is over in a few seconds.
“It must be one of the quickest events in the Olympic calendar,” said Australia’s Tom O’Halloran. “Surely the discus stays in the air longer than we’re climbing up that wall.”
The other two disciplines are more complex. In “bouldering”, athletes are set four complex routes — known as “problems” — to solve in four minutes. Then, in “lead,” climbers must clamber as high as possible on a 15m high overhanging wall in six minutes. Those tasks reward patient athleticism and problem solving, but are initially difficult to fathom for newcomers watching at home.
The controversy over the Olympic competition lies in it combining all the events to determine a champion. Climbers will get a score for the position they finish in each discipline, with the three scores multiplied to get a final result. The lowest scorer wins.
But climbers tend to specialise in a single skill, given their different demands, rather than excel at all of them. South Africa’s Christopher Cosser said this meant the competition was closer in spirit to the triathlon, where athletes must run, swim and cycle.
“You’ve got to be a well-rounded athlete, you can’t just focus on one,” he said.
The flaws in the system were evident in Ondra’s performance in qualifying. He finished 18th out of 20 climbers in the speed round, but was among the best performers in his favoured lead and bouldering rounds.
“It feels a little bit like others are starting 100m ahead, because there’s this speed climbing in which I’m definitely not talented,” said Ondra. “I’ve been trying really hard over the last two years to improve . . . let’s see if there’s any chance of not being last.”
Marco Scolaris, president of the International Federation of Sport Climbing, the global governing body, said the Olympic scoring system was a result of the IOC’s insistence that climbing should only be awarded one set of medals for each of the men and women’s events.
But Scolaris, who spearheaded a years-long lobbying campaign for climbing to become an Olympic sport, added: “We have to enter the Olympic Games in order to show the world what [climbing] is, and then grow . . . into a new dimension.”
Participation in climbing has exploded in recent years thanks to the proliferation of indoor wall complexes and the popularity of climbing documentaries such as The Dawn Wall and Free Solo.
The controversy over the Olympics’ climbing rules will be partially addressed at the Paris Games in three years’ time, when speed climbing will be split from lead and bouldering over two separate medal events. But no decision has been made as to whether climbing will remain in the Olympics beyond 2024.
Scolaris hopes it captures enough attention at the Tokyo Games to become a permanent fixture. The competitors in Japan accept their role as ambassadors for their sport, even if few believe the Olympics represents its pinnacle.
“Whoever wins will be the best climber that day and the first Olympic champion,” said Ondra. “That’s something you can’t take away.”