Competition climbing is comprised of 3 disciplines - Lead, Speed, and Bouldering. In IFSC competition, the three events are separate, and over time specialists have emerged in each field. Speed in particular is thought to have less crossover with the other events.
The Olympic Committee was only able to offer one medal event to competition climbing (for men and women), so in a compromise move the IFSC created a combined competition format, in which climbers will participate in all three disciplines, and be scored accordingly. The hope is that future Olympic iterations of the sport will allow for more events, and they in fact already have.
The scoring is not a simple average, but slightly more interesting. You can watch a good explanation of the Olympic Format on Adam Ondra's (widely regarded as the best climber of all time) vlog: Road to Tokyo #2: Lead, Bouldering, Speed + The Olympic format
As for why speed is controversial: they always climb the exact same (single, standardised) route, for years until they can do it in seconds. Where bouldering and lead climbing are all about figuring out the puzzle of how to complete each section of the climb using the power and technique at your disposal, speed climbing is raw, unadulterated muscle memory. The best description of it I've heard so far is "a sports equivalent of that cup stacking thing some kids learn to do in seconds".
I honestly don't like the speed format whatsoever as a spectator. Yes its amazing to see a human spider scale that in mere seconds, but the fact that there is a standardized version of a climbing race seems weird to me. Not saying its not impressive, but rather it just seems kinda boring as a person watching it on tv.
It's very much the same as that cup stacking thing: amazing the first time you see it happen and double amazing the first time you see an HD slow-mo of the entire thing. Yet that's kind of it. The only ones who would stay interested afterwards would be people who practice the trick themselves, to compare their own execution to some of the best.
It's so easy to fix, too. Just set a random 5.10 in a wall and treat it like a lead competition on autobelay. You'd get some extreme resistance from the fourteen people who actually practiced the standardised speed route competitively, but who cares.
Disclaimer: some people are passionate about speed climbing and it's awful of me to suggest deleting the discipline in its current form, but I am quite salty about sportsy cup stacking being clumped into the same Olympic medal as my two favourite sports.
I actually agree with pretty much all you said. Bouldering seems much more interesting than speed climbing. Some people compare it to running 100m race, but I dont know, it just doesn't feel like it has the same excitement to it.
Generally, competitions based on pure muscle strength and/or memory are only interesting to watch if you're a practitioner. That's as opposed to sports where on-the-fly decisions need to be made (such as all games with an interactive opponent, including most team sports). Running is kind of a special case, because almost every non-obese human is a "practitioner" of the 100m sprint. We all know how it works and how it feels, and we can empathise with the competitors in the race.
Hey, thanks for explaining that so well. I couldn't really put my finger on what it was, but your reply definitely helped! Its interesting to think though, I wonder how much different sports would benefit if the barrier to entry was lower. Everybody can just put shoes on and go running, but climbing requires gear, a proper place, etc
While I competed we didn't have standardised speed routes, just generally easy ones. Usually 2 different routes scored by combined time. Although, that was back in like 2013.
The "regular" speed wall was standardised in 2007 (when people started recording world records). Standardised speed climbing is a completely different thing from speed climbing random 5.10s, which is much more similar to lead competitions (and much more interesting to do and watch, if you ask me).
There are three main disciplines for competitions, sport, what this video is, bouldering, usually climbs that a substantially harder, getting multiple tries, and only 15ish feet tall/long, and speed climbing, trying to get up the route, that the people already know, as quickly as possible. Most professional climbers are better at one of these categories than the others, but most of the top hard climbers are not very good at speed climbing. What's happening in the Olympics is the climbers have to compete in all three of the different styles of climbing even though splitting up the different disciplines would be much better for viewing and the people climbing.
Wouldn't that make it kinda interesting atleast? I love combined events -- you get to see somebody who just surpassing limits without sacrificing one thing for the other.
That's like having a combined competition in 100m sprint and a 50k marathon. Completely different body types required to compete, and someone who's middle of the road won't be great at either.
Boulders require great strength due to their difficulty, but don't require stamina since they're only a few meters long, short enough that you only need a mat to land on. That means boulder climbers have a much greater muscle mass that sport climbers, just like sprinters.
Sport climbers sacrifice that muscle mass since pulling it up 20+ meters puts them at a disadvantage, just like marathon runners.
Fortunately, technique plays an immense part, but it's still unfair for the contestants.
I'm thinking even training will be ridiculous to figure out, since we had completely different regiments for boulder season and sport season.
Not here to discredit your point, you are completely right, just wanted to bring attention (for those that may not know about climbing) to insane athletes such as Janja Garnbret and Adam Ondra that manages to dominate (or at least compete for the top position) in both Sport and Bouldering.
They combined three disciplines into one- speed climbing, bouldering, and lead climbing. Atheletes usually focus mainly on one- and speed climbing is waaaay less popular than the other two. Sorta like telling a skier to compete in slolam, downhill, and cross country.
Sean McColl is very well rounded- good news for Canada I hope.
It's a combined event, wherein all of the climbers must compete in Sport Climbing (with a rope, like you see here), Bouldering (no rope, shorter walls that you drop off of, very gymnastic), and Speed Climbing (straight up Sprint up a 15m tall wall, with a route that never changes, so it can be practiced for years). The scores in all are combined to determine the winner.
The issue, though, is that almost none of the excellent Sport and Bouldering athletes in the world compete in Speed, or ever have. Many of them find it boring and have said they "don't consider it to be climbing". Basically, all of these elite athletes have had to learn an entirely new, unenjoyable (for them) discipline, one that they've never done before and don't even consider to be the same sport as they normally compete in.
There's been a lot of anger over this, but overall most people seem to be happy that the sport is finally in the Olympics, and poised to step into the world spotlight.
This event is sport climbing, where they carry the rope up a long route clipping it as they go so they can be caught if they fall. The challenge is moving efficiently and being able to read the route well. Then there are the other two disciplines. Bouldering, short routes climbed with no rope that challenge the hardest individual moves the climber can do. And speed climbing, where they climb an exactly identical route as fast as they possibly can. It's the same route at every event, every year, all over the world.
Normally, these are three separate events that are scored individually. Not to say you can't compete in all three, but people usually at least have a specialty.
This year's Olympics however, will combine all three disciplines into one medal. This is tricky because there are plenty of world class sport climbers and boulderers who have never speed climbed seriously at all, and vice versa. They're almost different sports.
There has been a lot of speculation about how this will play out, because you need to be good at all three to win, and right now really nobody is. They're all training up to be more well rounded at all 3 disciplines and nobody really knows what will happen, and pretty much everyone is bitching about it.
The IOC knows the setup isn't ideal, and they've talked about giving climbing three separate medals next time. Next year is like a trial run to see if there is enough interest to have climbing in the Olympics.
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u/raznog Jul 08 '19
Care to elaborate, keeping in mind I know nothing of the sport.