PARIS, France — Speed climbing is a relatively new sport to the Olympics, making its official debut during the last Olympic Games in Tokyo. It combines speed, agility, strategy and strength to compete in the three disciplines that make up the sport.
How does it work and how do the judges score athletes? Here's what you need to know about the event:
What is sport climbing?
Sport climbing involves three formats: bouldering, speed and lead.
In the first discipline, athletes are tasked with climbing a nearly 5-meter wall -- without ropes -- under a time limit with as few attempts as possible. During their climb, athletes have four boulders, or "problems," to overcome. In the semifinals, climbers have five minutes to complete the course and only four minutes in the finals. Climbers in the final get eight minutes to observe the course.
During the speed rounds, it's a race against the clock in a one-on-one elimination round. The event begins with "seeding" leads, in which 14 athletes have two runs -- one on each side of the wall. They are then ranked according to their combined times. Then come the elimination heats, in which athletes go head-to-head against an opponent, with the seven winners going to the next round. The last stage of the competition are "knockout" races, with quarterfinals, semi-finals and the final to decide the Olympic medal. The best athletes can scale a 15-meter-high wall in as little as 7 seconds! Athletes do get to study the wall before a race to try and plan the best route to the top.
In the final event -- lead -- athletes climb as high as they can up a 15-meter-high wall in six minutes. The higher they climb, the more points they earn. Reaching the top is worth 100 points. None of the athletes have seen the routes ahead of time, which are more complex and challenging.
See it in action below, as our morning show gave it a shot:
When did sport climbing become part of the Olympics?
According to the Olympics, the sport is one of the more recent events whose popularity exploded over the past 20 years.
One of the first organized competitions for the sport happened around 1985 when a group of climbers gathered near Turin, Italy, for "SportRoccia." It became the first organized competition in which climbers had to scale within a certain amount of time.
One year later, the first competition on an artificial wall was organized near Lyon, France.
It first came onto the Olympics scene in 2018, when it debuted at the Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games. It was later added to the official Olympic program during the 2020 Tokyo Games.
According to the Olympics, sport climbing is a very young sport, with nearly 40% of climbers under the age of 18. It's a mixed-gendered sport, with more than 25 million climbers spanning across 150 countries worldwide
How is it scored?
In the bouldering discipline, climbers get points for three scoring holds on a structure. Completing each problem earns a climber 25 points. For the lead discipline, the higher an athlete climbs, the more points they earn. Reaching the top is worth 100 points.
During the Tokyo Games, each athlete competed in all three disciplines of the sport, and the final scores were combined from across the three competitions. The climber with the lowest score took home the first-ever gold medal awarded in the history of sport climbing at the Olympics.
For the 2024 Games in Paris, two medals will be handed out: one for the combined competition of the bouldering and lead disciplines and the second for the speed discipline only.
Who won in sport climbing?
The first competitions in the event started on Aug. 5 with the boulder and seeding heats. On Aug. 7, two Polish climbers, Aleksandra Miroslaw and Aleksandra Kalucka, won gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the speed climbing final -- the first medal event for the sport during this Games -- with Chinese climber Lijuan Deng taking home the silver.
American speed climber Emily Hunt, from Georgia, failed to make it past the quarterfinals after slipping in the event. She told 11Alive she's keeping a positive outlook.
Several more medal events will be held in the coming days through the final day of competition.
