Speed climbing is a climbing discipline in which speed is the ultimate goal. Speed climbing is done on rocks, walls and poles and is only recommended for highly skilled and experienced climbers.
Shauna Coxsey is an English professional rock climber. She is the most successful competition climber in the UK, having won the IFSC Bouldering World Cup Season in both 2016 and 2017. She retired from competition after competing in the 2020 Olympics., and continues to climb at a high level outdoors.
Janja Garnbret is a Slovenian professional rock climber who specializes in sport climbing and competition climbing. She has won multiple competition lead climbing and competition bouldering events, two Olympic gold medals, and is widely regarded as the greatest competition climber of all time. In 2021, Garnbret became the first-ever female Olympic gold medalist in climbing, and successfully defended her title in 2024. With two gold medals, she is the most successful Slovenian athlete at the Summer Olympics. She is also the world's first-ever female climber to onsight an 8c (5.14b) graded sport climbing route.
Competition climbing made its Olympic debut at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Two events were held, one each for men and women. The format controversially consisted of one combined event with three disciplines: lead climbing, speed climbing and bouldering. The medals were determined based on best performance across all three disciplines. This format was previously tested at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. The Olympic code for sports climbing is CLB.
Reza Alipour Shenazandifard is an Iranian competition speed climber from Qazvin.
Jessica Pilz is an Austrian professional rock climber who specializes in competition climbing. She won the bronze medal in the combined bouldering and lead climbing event at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Competitions in the sport of climbing, governed by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), have been held at two editions of the Summer Olympic Games. First selected as one of the discretionary sports at the 2020 and 2024 games, sport climbing will be inducted as one of the mandatory sports at the 2028 games. Athletes compete in the disciplines of bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing. All three were contested as a single event in the 2020 programme, while speed climbing was spun off into its own event in the 2024 programme. Slovenia have won the most gold medals (2), while Austria, Japan, and the United States have won the most medals overall.
Miho Nonaka is a Japanese competition climber who specializes in competition bouldering. She competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in Women's combined, winning a silver medal.
There were 40 quota spots available for sport climbing at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Each National Olympic Committee (NOC) could obtain a maximum of 2 spots in each event. Each event had 20 competitors qualify: 18 from qualifying, 1 from the host (Japan), and 1 from Tripartite Commission invitations.
Iuliia Vladimirovna Kaplina is a Russian competition climber who has won multiple competition speed climbing events and set multiple world records. She was the world record holder in women's speed climbing until 6 August 2021, setting the record at the 2020 European Championships in Moscow (6.964).
Ludovico Fossali is an Italian competition speed climber. He competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in Men's combined climbing.
Aleksandra (Ola) Mirosław is a Polish soldier and competition speed climber. She is a two-time women's speed world champion as well as the current women's competition speed climbing world record holder. Mirosław won the gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in the speed climbing event, becoming the first ever Olympic champion in this event.
The men's combined event at the 2020 Summer Olympics was a climbing competition combining three disciplines. It was held from August 3 to August 5, 2021 at the Aomi Urban Sports Park in Tokyo. A total of 20 athletes from 15 nations competed. Sport climbing was one of four new sports added to the Olympic program for 2020.
Mickaël Mawem is a French professional rock climber who specializes in competition bouldering. He is the 2023 World boulder champion. He qualified for the 2020 Summer Olympics by finishing 7th at the 2019 IFSC Climbing World Championships. He also won the bouldering event in the 2019 IFSC Climbing European Championships, and at the 2023 World Championships at Bern.
The 2019 IFSC Combined Qualifier was an Olympic Qualifying Event. It was held from 28 November to 1 December 2019 in Toulouse, France. It was organized by the French Federation of Sport Climbing and Mountaineering or FFME. The athletes competed in combined format of three disciplines: speed, bouldering, and lead, simulating the 2020 Olympics format. Six athletes per gender would qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics through this event. The winner for men was Kokoro Fujii and for women was Futaba Ito.
Competition climbing at the 2024 Summer Olympics took place from 5 to 10 August at Le Bourget Sport Climbing Venue in Saint-Denis, returning to the program for the second time since the sport's official debut three years earlier in Tokyo 2020. The total number of medal events was doubled from two in the previous edition because the boulder-and-lead tandem had been separated from the speed format. Furthermore, the number of climbers increased from 40 to 68.
Yaroslav Tkach is a Ukrainian competition speed climber. He is 2022 World Games bronze medalist.
Emma Hunt is an American competition climber who specializes in competition speed climbing, and holds the American women's speed record with 6.301 seconds, set at the USA Climbing North American Cup in Salt Lake City in April 2024.
In qualifying for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a total of 68 climbers, with an equal distribution between men and women, will compete across two separate competition climbing disciplines at these Games for the first time, namely: a unique competition bouldering-and-competition lead climbing combined event, and a separate competition speed climbing event.
Samuel Watson is an American professional rock climber who specializes in competition speed climbing and represents the United States at IFSC Climbing World Cups. He holds the world record for the discipline at 4.74 seconds, accomplished at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, where he took a bronze medal.
