Competition climbing is a form of regulated rock climbing competition held indoors on purpose-built artificial climbing walls. The three competition climbing disciplines are lead climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing. The result of multiple disciplines can be used in a "combined" format to determine an all-round winner. Competition climbing is sometimes called "sport climbing", which is the name given to pre-bolted lead climbing.
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.
The International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) is the international governing body for the sport of competition climbing, which consists of the disciplines lead climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing.
The IFSC Climbing World Championships are the biennial world championship event for competition climbing that is organized by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC). This event determines the male and female world champions in the three disciplines of competition climbing: competition lead climbing, competition bouldering, and competition speed climbing. Since 2012, a combined ranking is also determined, for climbers competing in all disciplines, and additional medals are awarded based on that ranking. The first event was organized in Frankfurt in 1991.
Brooke Raboutou is a French-American professional rock climber who specializes in competition climbing where she competes as part of the US National Team. She won the silver medal in the combined bouldering and lead climbing event at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
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. He is nicknamed the "Persian Cheetah".
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.
The 2019 IFSC Climbing World Championships, the 16th edition, were held in Hachioji, Japan from 11 to 21 August 2019. The championships consisted of lead, speed, bouldering, and combined events. The paraclimbing event was held separately from 16 to 17 July in Briançon, France. The combined event also served as an Olympic qualifying event for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
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.
Seo Chae-hyun, also known as Chaehyun Seo, is a South Korean professional rock climber who specializes in competition climbing. She won the overall 2019 World Cup title in competition lead climbing in her senior debut season. In 2021 she won the IFSC World Championship in lead climbing. Seo is a two-time Olympian, having represented South Korea at the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics.
Colin Duffy is an American professional rock climber who specializes in competition climbing. At age 17, he became the youngest climber to qualify to compete at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Veddriq Leonardo is an Indonesian competition climber who specializes in competition speed climbing. He has held the world record for the discipline for about a year twice, first after setting it en route to winning the men's speed climbing event at the 2021 IFSC Climbing World Cup in Salt Lake City, and again at the 2023 IFSC Climbing World Cup in Seoul. He is the current Olympic champion, having won speed climbing in 2024, thus becoming the first Indonesian non-badminton Olympic gold medalist.
Yoshiyuki Ogata is a Japanese professional competition climber and boulderer. He has won multiple medals in competition bouldering at IFSC Climbing World Cup events, including gold medals at Vail in 2019 and at Innsbruck in 2021. Ogata won the overall IFSC Men's Bouldering title for the 2021 and 2022 seasons and finished third overall in 2019.
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.
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.
Sam Avezou is a French rock climber who specializes in competition climbing. He won the silver medal in the bouldering event at the 2022 IFSC Climbing European Championships. He qualified for the boulder and lead combined event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, placing 11th overall.
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