With its first appearance as an individual medal discipline, speed climbing made waves at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. Consisting of bracket-style head-to-head races, speed climbing pits athletes against each other in a sprint to the top of a 15-meter wall. At an overhang of five degrees and containing 20 hands and 11-foot holds, the wall is not an easy ascent. Richard Montgomery junior Rebecca Morrison said, “It seems like it’d take an incredible amount of strength and training to achieve.” However, Olympic bronze medalist and USA athlete Sam Watson found no problem doing the route at the Olympics, running up the wall and setting a world record of 4.74 seconds – longer than it takes an ordinary person to put their socks on or brush their teeth.
In the early 2000s, the International Federation of Sport Climbing created and standardized the modern speed climbing wall, and aside from some minor tweaks, the route has remained for the most part unchanged. This standardization allows for consistency between walls worldwide, allowing athletes training anywhere from Indonesia to the USA to train at home and then perform their best at international competitions. The shift of even one hold on the wall would serve to disrupt climbers, throwing off their hard-earned muscle memory and causing them to slip or fall from the wall.
Athletes like Watson train on the wall and in the gym many days a week, requiring high levels of commitment. Watson saw his dedication pay off, however, when he scored his ticket to the Summer Olympics by winning the 2023 Pan American games at only 17 years old. He was later joined on his journey to the Olympics by his teammates Zach Hammer, Emma Hunt, and Piper Kelly, filling all of the allotted quota spots for the USA in the speed climbing discipline.During the competition’s semi final race, Watson lost his face-off against China’s Wu Peng, losing his shot at competing for the gold medal. He still had a chance at bronze, however, and kept his cool for the “small final” against Iran’s Reza Alipour. In his final race, Watson ran the fastest time ever seen in competition, clinching not only the bronze medal, but also beating his previous world record.
Many spectators felt the flashy and exhilarating nature of the sport garnered speed climbing a lot of attention during the Olympics. Climbers and non-climbers alike tuned in to watch the show, unpredictable races keeping them constantly on the edge of their seats.Thomas S. Wootton senior Max Podlesny said, “I thought the speed climbing Olympics was the coolest thing since I saw a world record get broken.”
Written by: Renata Podlesny
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons