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 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.
USA Climbing is the national governing body of the sport of competition climbing in the United States. As a 501(c)3 non-profit, they promote Sport Climbing which comprises three competition disciplines: bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing, in elite, youth and collegiate formats.
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.
Sport climbing at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics was held from 7 to 10 October. The competition took place at the Parque Urbano in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, Argentina. This marked the debut of the sport at the Youth Olympics.
Competition climbing has 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 is an Olympic silver medalist in sport climbing.
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.
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.
The women's combined event at the 2020 Summer Olympics was a climbing competition combining three disciplines. It took place between 4 and 6 August 2021 at the Aomi Urban Sports Park in Tokyo. 20 athletes from 15 nations competed. Sport climbing was one of four new sports added to the Olympic program for 2020.
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.
The 2022 IFSC Climbing World Cup is the 34th edition of the international sport climbing competition series organised by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), held in 12 locations. There are 21 events: six bouldering, seven lead, seven speed, and one bouldering & lead combined events. The series began on 8 April in Meiringen, Switzerland with the first bouldering competitions of the season, and concluded on 22 October in Morioka-Iwate, Japan, which introduced the Boulder & Lead combined format that will be used at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
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.
Sport climbing competitions at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile are scheduled to be held between October 21 and 24, 2023 at the Cerrillos Park Climbing Walls in Santiago, Chile. The sport will be making its Pan American Games debut, after it was added to the sports program in December 2021.
The 2024 IFSC Climbing World Cup is the 36th edition of the international competition climbing series organised by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), held in 9 locations. There are 16 events per gender: five competition bouldering, six competition lead climbing, and five competition speed climbing events. The series begins on 8 April in Keqiao, Shaoxing, China, with the first bouldering World Cup of the season, and will conclude on 8 October in Seoul with bouldering, lead, and speed.
The 2024 Olympic Qualifier Series was a sporting event held in May and June 2024 in Shanghai and Budapest, respectively. This two-part series was the inaugural edition of a multi-sport Olympic qualifying event, which determined the athletes who will compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics in BMX freestyle, breaking, skateboarding, and sport climbing.
Ievgeniia (Jenya) Serikivna Kazbekova is a Ukrainian competition climber. She is a two-time European Championships silver medallist and competed in the women's combined event at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Aniya Holder is a South African rock climber who specializes in competition climbing, particularly speed climbing. As of 2024, Holder is the reigning female African Continental Champion in women's speed climbing, and she is representing South Africa in that discipline at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
