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 (3 each).
The inclusion was proposed by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) in 2015.[1] In September 2015, competition climbing was included in a shortlist along with baseball, softball, skateboarding, surfing, and karate to be considered for inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics;[2] and in June 2016, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that they would support the proposal to include all of the shortlisted sports in the 2020 Games.[3] Finally, on August 3, 2016, all five sports (counting baseball and softball together as one sport) were approved for inclusion in the 2020 Olympic program.[4]
Members of the IFSC explained that they were only granted one gold medal per gender by the Olympic committee, and they did not want to exclude speed climbing. The IFSC's goal for the 2020 Olympics was primarily to establish climbing and its three disciplines as Olympic sports; changes to the format could follow later. This tactic proved to be successful; the 2024 Summer Olympics would expand sport climbing to separate boulder-and-lead and speed climbing events.[6][7][8]
Beginning at the 2028 Summer Olympics, the boulder and lead disciplines will be split into separate medal events.[9]
Technical information
For Olympic level sports climbing, route setters are instructed to set lead climbs at a grade of between 8c(5.14b) and 9a(5.14d) for both the men's and women's events. For boulder, men's routes are set between a grade of V10(7C+) and V14(8B+), and women's routes between V9(7C) and V12(8A+).[10][11]
Boulder grade are given in V-Grades and grades in brackets () are in Fb-Grades.
Due to the climbing routes being at the highest level, routes cannot be sufficiently tested, therefore the exact grade of each route is unknown, and may not reflect the target range.
The following nations have taken part in the Olympic climbing competition. The numbers in the table indicate the number of competitors sent to that year's Olympics.
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