As musicians are unreliable with sending me answers and this is primarily a sports blog I figured I should write some sports content. A fun fact about me I do surfing and rock climbing, two sports that have now been added to the Olympics for the Tokyo games. I might do a blog about surfing another time but I going to talk about climbing this time.
When I say rock climbing is in the Olympics what I should actually say is sport climbing is in the Olympics. What is the difference you ask? A rock-climbing competition takes place outside on actual rock, whereas sport climbing is done on a man-made wall with synthetic holds, a minor technicality you probably didn’t care about. In the Olympics, there are three different styles of climbing that all of the athletes compete in and the score of all is totaled. Whether this is because of budget cuts in a almost $13 billion event or it be for another reason, versatility is being rewarded over everything else. The three styles are lead climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing and they vary more than you might think.
Lead climbing is the classic depiction of climbing where someone scales a wall, taking the rope up with them while someone belays from the bottom. After a small amount of time to observe/ study the route, each climber is brought out one at a time and try and get as high up the 15-meter wall within a fixed time.
Bouldering is more technical. Normally a boulder problem will be a maximum of 5 meters tall and there are no ropes involved, just a padded floor. For the Olympics, again after a small amount of time to study the boulder problems, the climbers will be brought out one at a time to try and top as many boulder problems as possible within the allotted time. Because the boulder problems are shorter and there is no harness or rope to obstruct movement, the moves required will often be a lot more technical and strenuous.
The third and final discipline, speed climbing is pretty self-explanatory. The interesting part of it is that the holds are identical every time. The route for speed climbing around the world is standardized, meaning the top climbers can climb off muscle memory and focus on shaving off milliseconds. Climbers will race to the top side by side two at a time and each matchup can be over in under 6 seconds.
It will be interesting to see how the climbing goes down when the Olympics finally happen but unfortunately there are no New Zealanders in the event this time.
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