Everything Wrong with Olympic Rock Climbing Debut

In this video I cover what went wrong with the debut of Olympic Rock Climbing. From poor announcing to a terrible combined format, there was not a lot that people liked about the debut. The things that went wrong in the Olympics were mostly due to the unavailability of three separate medal set for the different disciplines. This even led to a climber setting a world record at the Olympics and not even winning a medal!

[CaitofFate]

I havent found a worse debut than skateboarding, but this takes the cake. The fact that they knew to separate park, and street, but not bouldering, lead, and speed is baffleing me

[crustwench]

Underarm... to overarm...to squeezing... to fingerholds...

[DavidPeveto]

They've announced in Paris 2024 they're pulling Speed out into its own event and having a combined Lead and Boulder event, which feels like a good step forward.

[joshknapp]

They should do it like gymnastics where there are individual events (Speed, Lead, Bouldering) and an all-around event where the points are combined

[christiangros]

Totally agree with you! These are simply 3 different disciplines. You will never find someone in the pros who can run a 100m race and a marathon and achieve the best time. (I've never seen Bolt run a marathon) Anyone who climbs and bouldering knows that you can't peak in both at the same time. Respect to all the athletes who have managed to master both disciplines with a grueling training. However, the physical stress is so great in the long run that they can not stand it very long or we will soon see special diseases or doping as in other sports. Let's just hope that it remains a sport where the athletes are friends, train together and try to get stronger together and are happy when someone else makes a difficult boulder or tops the route, no matter what country they come from. That's why I love to watch the athletes.

[spencerj]

Solid video man! You made your way into my algorithm, so I'd say you're on your way to getting bigger.

[theblev]

solid video but disagree with your point on speed specialists just being allowed in. They all had to qualify following the same rules as the other athletes. Miroslaw reached the olympics by making it to the finals of a combined climbing world cup event as well as other achievements

[rud]

I imagine there were a certain amount of medals dedicated to the climbing category and there weren't enough to split the disciplines. I don't think it's an issue of not being able to acquire physical meals. It would have been that the IOC limited the number of medals that could be given to climbers.

[thorna]

You didn't cover the awful commentary 😂😂 also when Jacob topped the lead it was so anti climactic because it was like the height of excitement yet it was crowning someone else the champion. Felt weird.

[jamesowen]

It wasn't that they couldn't produce enough medals, it's that climbing was on a trial run and they tend to ramp up the number of medals based on how well it goes. Climbing gets more medals next time, and that was always going to be the way it happened based on my knowledge

[alexschmidt]

The real issue that you didnt mentioned is that they decided to scored by multiplying the So if you didnt come in first in one of the 3 events it was basically impossible to make the podium

[millacabral]

The biggest problem by far with Sport Climbing's Olympic debut was the terrible commentators they dug out of some random broadcast network for the event. That main dude was constantly yelling and blabbering generic crap at the audience, while the women would try to explain the physics behind the sport with clearly no actual knowledge of climbing or physics.
Thankfully the format will be completely different in Paris 2024, with Speed being a separate event (still tournament bracket sadly tho), then Boulder+Lead comined, where climbers earn scores out of 100 based on successful moves, with the points from each discipline then added together to form the athlete's final points total, which determines their placement and medals. The max possible score for B+L will be 200 points, requiring flashing every boulder and topping the lead wall. This new format also includes 2 zones for bouldering, which I think is much more fair when the last few moves are fkin hard but you get no extra reward unless you top. It has been successfully tested and tweaked over the European and World Championships in 2022 and 2023, so I'm really excited to see it during the Olympics. What remains to be seen is if they will use the experienced and competent commentators that have been covering IFSC competitions for many years or if they'll call up some randos once again depending on the region and language of the broadcast. Ugh. I'm Canadian, so I sincerely hope we get the general UK-English coverage with Matt Groom and someone else, possibly Shauna Coxsey or Meghan Markle.

[infernoleopard]

The speed climbing record setter not winning gold because she was quite specialized to being a speed climber reminds me of how a guy in the early modern Olympics set a long jump record in a similar kind of combination event and ended up not getting gold

[phsopher]

No one let anyone in. How did speed specialists qualify? Well, largely they didn't. There were three speed specialists out of twenty for men, four for women. How did those qualify? Simple -- by being good at speed. Miroslaw and Bassa Mawem (who was the speed specialist, not Mickael) were both 7th out of 20 in the qualis, Anouk Jaubert was 8th, Khaibulin was 11th, Yiling was 12th. They all beat lots of top boulder/lead climbers. The scoring system simply favored being good at one discipline.

[holyknightthatpwns]

The commentary about the actual climbing is insightful, but most of your questions about why and how things were done, how people qualified, why heats are used, etc are well documented.

[benjaminvoisin]

The issue with medal is not the cost of making more medals, but the fact that the number of medal in the Olympics is supposed to be constant. Meaning that adding a new sport implies removing one medal elsewhere

[carinthian_boulder]

everybody seems to forget, that Adam, who was by far the worst speed climber, got served a 4th place finish in speed because of the DNS of Bassa he got to advance into the next round.... Seems pretty stupid to me, to give the free round in a KO format to the slowest competitor out of the qualifying. so therefore he shouldnt have got a medal anyway... All in all this was a rather stupid competition and EVERYBODY knew this beforehand!!

[soyanchd]

A gold medal cost about between 800 to 1300$ at current silver and gold price based on its size. Not cheap but the IOC could definitely afford some spares for all 3 disciplines

[kdnrh]

Combining climbing disciplines makes about as much sense as putting all the combative arts together. Strange that they seem to be able to comprehend how dumb it would be to make wrestlers also compete in judo, karate and taekwondo, but can't figure out that there are specialties in climbing.
Now if they just want to make all the combatives one big cage match battle royale, I'd watch.

[bermuda]

I think the idea of outdoor climbing in the olympics might be cool, but there are definitely an insane amount of factors to consider as opposed to indoor. It would be nice though to see, and I think it would be a great way to showcase the rock / boulder styles that each country has to offer.