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OLYMPIC UNDERDOGS DISRUPTERS TO KEEP ON YOUR RADAR

3 MEDALS, 40 COMPETITORS OUR PICKS TO PLACE

BEST EVER WILL JANJA GARNBRET CONTINUE HER STREAK?

ALL IN: MEET AMERICA'S FIRST OLYMPIC CLIMBERS

BROOKE RABOUTOU

NATHANIEL COLEMAN

COLIN DUFFY

KYRA CONDIE

A LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN AT THE HARD WORK THAT BUILT TEAM USA PLUS MEET THE PARIS 2024 HOPEFULS

THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF

BD Athlete Carlo Traversi

Christian Adam

THE CIRCUIT COLLECTION

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BRINGS CLIMBING TO EVERYONE

HOW WE GOT HERE:: COMPETITION CLIMBING THROUGH THE YEARS. 1995

1985 SportRocchia, the first lead climbing competition is held outdoors on natural rock in Bardonecchia, Italy. French climber François Savigny creates the first artificial climbing hold and founds the company Entre-Prises.

1989 UIAA officially recognizes competitive Sport Climbing. The first Climbing World Cup is held, featuring only lead climbing.

1990 1997

It was decided that all international climbing events will be held on artificial walls to reduce the environmental impact of competitions.

1994 A national governing body for competition climbing is formed in the United States, later renamed USA Climbing (USAC).

1995 ESPN hosts the first ever X Games in Rhode Island. Sport climbing is an official event.

1998 A successful test bouldering comp called the Top Rock Challenge was held. Speed climbing becomes an official discipline of the World Cup.

2001

1999 Bouldering becomes an official discipline of the World Cup. Bouldering is an event at the X Games in San Francisco. Chris Sharma wins.

2008 First Paraclimbing Cup held in Moscow.

2006–2007 UIAA ends governance of competitive climbing.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) forms.

EP

has been building walls and shaping climbing holds since the sport began using artificial surfaces. French climber François Savigny created the first artificial climbing hold in 1985 and subsequently founded Entre-Prises. This company began building climbing walls around the same time that climbing competitions came into existence.

Soon after, it was decided that international climbing competitions should be held on artificial surfaces to prevent negative impact on the outdoor environment. This expanded the market for EP’s walls and holds.

2013 EP becomes the official partner and exclusive supplier of climbing walls to the IFSC.

2016 After many years of lobbying, sport climbing is confirmed as an official sport for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

2018 EP works with the IFSC to provide the climbing field of play for the Youth Games Buenos Aires.

2021 After being postponed due to a global pandemic, climbing will be an official event in the Olympic Games for the first time. One medal will be given per gender for combined performance in disciplines of lead climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing.

In 2012, USA Climbing announced that EP would be its official partner and provide walls for USA Climbing National Championship events. In 2013 EP also became the official partner of the IFSC. This relationship has recently been extended to 2025.

“It is part of EP’s DNA to support competition climbing,” said Sander Culliton, CEO of EPUSA. “Extending our long-standing relationship with USA Climbing continues our history of providing the Field of Play for the world’s best athletes in a sport that we are all so passionate about.”

After providing the climbing wall for the Youth Games Buenos Aires in 2018, EP was selected to be the sole supplier for the first-ever Olympic climbing wall. EP brings more than 30 years of experience to the table, and will provide a unique wall that integrates the three disciplines of speed, bouldering, and lead climbing in an aesthetic and functional way. EP’s wall will offer climbers an intriguing experience and will facilitate an incredible show for the public during this historic climbing competition.

2021

“The IFSC is delighted that our long-term partner EP is being honoured as the official provider of the climbing wall for Sport Climbing’s Olympic debut,” said Marco Scolaris, IFSC President. “We look forward to seeing their final product on the Olympic stage.”

Since its start, EP has been dedicated to creating community, building a bridge between recreation and competition, and sharing adventure with everyone. Now EP welcomes the chance to share passion for climbing with the world.

EPCLIMBING.COM

GYMCLIMBER GYMCLIMB ER SUMMER 2021 / ISSUE 9

THE OLYMPICS ISSUE 8 HOST CHANCES TEAM JAPAN IS A CONSISTENT WINNER. WILL THEY DOMINATE THE GAMES? John Burgman

14 TEAM ABC FOUNDED BY A CHAMP, THIS GYM KEEPS TURNING THEM OUT. Alison Osius

20 TEAM USA

52

MEET OUR OLYMPIC CREW. John Burgman

TAKING BETS, ANYONE?

22

60

OUR INTERNATIONAL PICKS

THE CHAMPION FACTORY

SCORING

TEAM SLOVENIA HAS THE BEST COMPETITION ATHLETE IN HISTORY. AND THERE’S MORE. Delaney Miller

WHAT TO KNOW TO KEEP SCORE. Delaney Miller

30 THE FEW FROM AFAR

62 COLIN DUFFY

FRESH FACES ON THE SCENE. Owen Clarke

AMERICA’S YOUNGEST TEAM MEMBER HAS A SHOT. Delaney Miller

36

68

ROOTS

TEAM USA BEHIND THE CURTAIN

TODAY’S BLOOMING OLYMPIC TREE STARTED ON THE GROUND. Alison Osius

42 MEET THE COACH JOSH LARSON, WIZARD BEHIND THE CURTAIN. Dave Wetmore 4

GYMCLIMBER

A PEEK AT THE MAGIC AND HARD WORK THAT BUILT THE TEAM. Francis Sanzaro / Delaney Miller

84 UNDERSTANDING SPEED IT’S ALL THE BUZZ. John Brosler

88 RYAN ARMENT A COACH ON COACHING OLYMPIANS. Francis Sanzaro

90 ALEX JOHNSON A LONGTIME TOP COMPETITOR ON WHAT THE GAMES MEAN TO HER. Alex Johnson

92 CLIMBING ISN’T THE ONLY NEW SPORT SURFING, SKATEBOARDING, KARATE AND BASEBALL/ SOFTBALL JOIN CLIMBING. Francis Sanzaro

COVER PHOTO: Team USA. PHOTO: JESS TALLEY/LOUDER THAN 11 THIS PAGE: Vita Lukan (SLO) on her way to placing fifth at the Bouldering World Cup, the first held since the pandemic shutdown, in Meiringen, Switzerland, in April. PHOTO: VLADEK ZUMR

GYMCLIMBER EDITORIAL Content Director Duane Raleigh

Associate Editors Matt Samet Kevin Corrigan

Editor In Chief Francis Sanzaro

C R E AT I V E

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MOST OF THE ACTIVITIES DEPICTED HEREIN CARRY A SIGNIFICANT RISK OF PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH. Rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, backcountry skiing, and all other outdoor activities are inherently dangerous. The owners, staff, and management of GYM CLIMBER do not recommend that anyone participate in these activities unless they are experts, seek qualifi ed professional instruction and/or guidance, are knowledgeable about the risks involved, and are willing to personally assume all responsibility associated with those risks. ©2021. The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner. The views herein are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of GYM CLIMBER’s ownership, staff, or management.

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8 GYMCLIMBER

The Host Japan has had the most consistently dominant team for 10 years, but will they own the Olympics?

FACING PAGE: DANIEL GAJDA/IFSC, THIS PAGE: EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC

During the final round of the Bouldering World Cup competition in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 2011, Akiyo Noguchi eased into a toe-hook on an overhanging volume, gripped a faraway sloper, cut her feet briefly and then cruised to the top.

Noguchi would finish the round with all boulders topped to claim a victory over Austria’s Anna Stöhr—at the time the legend-to-beat in the women’s division on the circuit. But it was not just Noguchi’s eventual win in a stacked field that garnered attention; it was her climbing style, and the fluidity and assuredness with which she progressed through the pulse-quickening round. “Akiyo Noguchi of Japan shows some great athleticism as she climbs her way to victory,” one of the commentators eff used as Noguchi stabilized herself in that particular boulder’s tricky overhanging toe-hook. “Akiyo’s consistency and few attempts clinch the title here.”

Olympic team member Akiyo Noguchi (both pages) has been a dominant force for over a decade, with 21 World Cup competition victories. She placed fourth in the Meiringen, Switzerland, Bouldering World Cup in April.

CREDIT

GYMCLIMBERMAG.COM 9

A TEAM FORMS Noguchi would eventually qualify for the Tokyo Olympics by placing second at the 2019 World Championships in Hachioji, Japan; this accomplishment, as a culmination of years she spent as Team Japan’s figurehead on the international circuit, was bolstered by 21 total World Cup competition victories and a quartet of overall bouldering season titles. But just three places below Noguchi in the final standings at those same World Championships was Miho Nonaka, who also earned an Olympic berth. In a suitable Olympic narrative, Nonaka had become the intriguing complement to Noguchi, their climbing styles as aesthetically different as their backgrounds.

Eight years younger than Noguchi, Nonaka was a pure power climber and the product of the Tokyo gym scene, while Noguchi hailed from a rural farm and climbed on top of cows for recreation before she ever scaled a gym wall. Also, Noguchi had been consistent on the international scene practically ever since that commentary at Eindhoven explicitly stated so in 2011, whereas Nonaka’s presence was more intermittent. Most notably, Nonaka won the overall bouldering season title in 2018 right before shoulder injuries forced her off the circuit for approximately a year.

As a result, anticipation has mounted for the Tokyo Olympics to mark Nonaka’s full return to elite form. Or perhaps the upcoming

10 G Y M C L I M B E R

Eight years younger than Noguchi, Miho Nonaka rounds out Japan’s women’s roster.

A shoulder injury sidelined her for much of a year, and the Olympics could mark her return to form and serve as a crowning achievement.

Olympics will serve as Noguchi’s crowning achievement before a preplanned retirement. Or maybe the Olympics will manage to showcase both of them with a pair of medals in the women’s division for Team Japan.

Japan’s Olympians in the men’s division offer intriguing complements as well. Tomoa Narasaki and Kai Harada also clinched their Olympic berths at those 2019 World Championships. The duo’s Olympic inclusion was fitting considering the two men had traded bouldering World Championships dating back to 2016. And while Narasaki solidified a competition climbing legacy by innovating in the Speed discipline—omitting the third foothold jib to establish new standard beta called the “Tomoa Skip”—Harada occasionally beat Narasaki at speed events (such as the Speed World Cup in Wujiang, China, in 2019).

As part of a panorama, the consistent promise and prominence of Japan’s top competitors on the World Cup

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC (BOTH PAGES)

Noguchi had just turned 21 at the time of that Eindhoven World Cup competition, and news of climbing’s inclusion in the Olympics was still years away. However, Noguchi had already established herself as a formidable presence on the international scene, having won previous World Cup events in Canmore, Canada, in 2011; Wien, Austria, in 2010; and Kazo, Japan, in 2009, to name a few. In doing so, Noguchi had managed to keep her home country of Japan as a mainstay in IFSC event finals, largely picking up where Japan’s previous competition superstar, Yuji Hirayama, left off in the 1990s.

Yet, upon reflection and irradiated now by the glow of the forthcoming Tokyo Olympics, where climbing will finally debut, Noguchi was doing something else during her initial years on the IFSC circuit: She was heralding the dominance of an entire national team, and summoning the company of many Japanese compatriots who would soon join her at the elite level.

LOST IN THE OLYMPIC NARRATIVE IS HOW MANY COMPETITORS ON JAPAN’S NATIONAL TEAM ALMOST QUALIFIED. circuit over the past few years aligns nicely with the fact that the Olympics will take place in Japan. No other national team has been as consistently dominant over the past 10 years as Team Japan, so there is no better place for competition climbing to have such a highprofile Olympic premier.

CLIMBING BECOMES THE CRAZE Noguchi, Nonaka, Narasaki, and Harada have received most of their nation’s press and attention as the Olympics draw near. Lost in the Olympic narrative, however, is how many

Tomoa Narasaki has won four bouldering World Cup events but is no slouch in speed. He holds Japan’s speed record and developed the “Tomoa Skip,” an innovative move that omits the third foothold on the speed route.

competitors on Japan’s national team almost qualified. For example, also in the finals at those 2019 World Championships in Hachioji—and narrowly missing out on Olympic berths—were Meichi Narasaki, Kokoro Fujii, Ai Mori, and Futaba Ito. The 2019 World Cup season also saw Keita Dohi, Yuki Hada, Natsuki Tanii, Aika Tajima, Mei Kotake, Natsumi Hirano, and Mao Nakamura advance to the final rounds of various events. These additional names added to any ensuing conversation about precisely who the best competitors on Japan’s robust national team might be.

Team Japan’s depth throughout 2019 was so impressive that it formed the basis for a lawsuit by Japan’s climbing federation, the Japan Mountaineering and Sport Climbing Association (JMSCA), which argued that Japan should be allowed to vie for Olympic berths at multiple qualification events—even after the country’s Olympic quota had been filled at a single event. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed by a court of arbitration, but it inadvertently shined a bright spotlight on the surfeit of top-tier competitors under the auspices and oversight of the JMSCA. When trying to trace just how and why the JMSCA developed such an abundance of elite talent, you encounter cultural and environmental factors. The assistant coach of Team Japan, Takako Hoshi, points out that a Japanese concept of kaizen—which literally means “to improve”—is utilized as equally in streamlining manufacturing processes in Japan as it is in climbing gyms. “In Japan, we have this culture that we have to constantly, continuously improve,” Hoshi has stated in the past. “It’s in our culture to do that.”

But any systematic adherence to improvement, although relevant, does not make Japan unique among countries represented on the World Cup circuit. Closely coupled with that kaizen concept in training is a climbing-gym scene that is far more concentrated than almost anywhere else in the world. Hoshi once estimated that there were 400 climbing gyms in Japan; if that same concentration were to be applied to the United States, there would be approximately 10,000 gyms here instead of, according to Climbing Business Journal, the 538 that currently exist.

This gym surplus in Japan means that climbing is in the midst of its own boom period in the country, paralleling the Olympic hype and resplendency. And with that, a Japanese domestic climbing industry has been allowed to thrive. As an illustration, in 2015, when Kazuma

G Y M C L I M B E R M A G . C O M 11

12 G Y M C L I M B E R

Kai Harada has traded bouldering World Championships with Tomoa Narasaki since 2016 and beat Narasaki in speed in 2019.

The depth and success of Team Japan helps explain why it has been the most consistently dominant team on the world circuit for over a decade.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC POSTPONEMENT ALLOWED MEMBERS OF TEAM JAPAN TO IMPROVE. a problem with ‘Flathold’s volumes’ and ‘Cheeta’s holds.’

I’ve only heard kids talk like that in Japan.” Miyazawa says that B-Pump is one of the few gyms anywhere that makes a point to set exclusively competitionstyle boulders—very difficult and highly technical. “A lot of climbers actually visit us from all over the world to try highquality problems,” he says.

THE STARS ALIGN FOR TOKYO Even with such a robust domestic scene as a foundation, and with such unparalleled national depth, the current state of Team Japan will largely be

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC

and Saari Watanabe founded Ziprock Climbing Gym in Fukuoka, they quickly observed climbing’s rapidly increasing popularity. They decided to expand their business, and began creating homemade climbing products, which eventually grew into an entirely new company called Mudhand. Today, Mudhand makes everything from chalk buckets to climbing pants and shirts, and is one of the most popular domestic Japanese climbing brands. “Of course, the Olympics have had a positive impact on us,” Kazuma says.

Kazuma thinks the atmosphere within Japan’s climbing gyms has played a role in establishing such depth at the elite level. He notes that Japan’s climbing gyms are typically smaller than the full-service facilities common in other countries such as the United States, and such close quarters often prompt highly collaborative group climbing sessions. Japan’s gyms often focus solely on bouldering and feature a lot of spray walls. “We do a session called dojo several times a week,” Kazuma says, speaking of the communal climbing on spray walls that is common in many Japanese gyms. “We do not set routes: We just improvise on the spray wall, and bouldering problems get made—I think of this as one element of Japanese climbing culture.”

Shota Uokiri, CEO of Bouldering Gym Share, a 4,000-square-foot gym in Yokohama, says that the profusion of gyms in relatively close proximity throughout Japan’s urban areas has also given rise to a specific type of climber—one who “circuits” the climbing gyms in a given region, visiting as many as possible in a short period of time before starting the “circuit” all over again. “I believe that the ‘circuit’ climbers contribute to [gym] improvements and the quality of the routesetting as well—since we’re always trying to better our routes to attract them,” Uokiri says.

“Japanese climbers are enthusiastic,” says Katsu Miyazawa, the director of B-Pump, one of Japan’s most well-known and longestoperating gyms, with facility locations in Akihabara and Ogikubo.

“They know the name of holds, brands, and moves very well—not only adult climbers, but also kid climbers. I’ve heard kids talk about

COURTESY B-PUMP

Predictions for Medals It’s hard to imagine anyone in the women’s division beating Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret.

She went undefeated on the 2019 Bouldering World Cup circuit and won the Combined category at the 2019 World Championships. The only way Garnbret doesn’t earn Olympic gold is if she, herself, messes up or buckles under the pressure—unlikely, but anything can happen.

The recent gains made

by Japan’s Akiyo Noguchi in speed climbing make her a solid pick for the silver medal.

And let’s get nationalistic and say that someone from Team USA will earn the bronze: Brooke Raboutou was the first American to qualify for the Olympics, but Kyra Condie has won the American Combined Invitational. That makes this a pick ’em situation.

The men’s division does not have a clear favorite for the gold, but Japan’s Tomoa Narasaki won the Combined discipline at the 2019 World Championships and has steadily improved at all disciplines. Expect him to look stellar through the Olympics’ speed climbing and bouldering portions. If he can avoid any low falls or slips in the lead portion, he can win.

Let’s foresee an American man earning the silver medal.

Colin Duffy, the 2020 PanAmerican champion, could shock the world. But since Duffy is only 17 years old, his big Olympic moment will likely come at a later Olympics and the edge goes to the veteran Coleman. And Austria’s Jakob Schubert could earn the bronze to round out the men’s podium.

Of course, keep in mind that part of the fun of making predictions is watching them fall apart. No matter who earns the medals, climbing at the Olympics this summer will surely be a phenomenal show.

B-Pump, one of Japan’s best-known and longestoperating gyms.

“A lot of climbers actually visit us from all over the world to try high-quality problems,” says Katsu Miyazawa, gym director. If the U.S. had the same density of climbing gyms as Japan, we’d have 10,000 instead of just over 500.

The popularity of indoor climbing is a large contributing factor in why Japan fields such a strong climbing team.

gauged by how its four Olympians perform in the Combined format of the Olympics this summer.

To that point, one of the most intriguing developments of the Tokyo Olympics’ COVID-19 pandemic postponement period was how members of Team Japan improved, particularly in disciplines that were not their specialties. At the country’s national championship, the Japan Cup, in March, 2021, Tomoa Narasaki clocked a run of 5.790 seconds in his first speed-climbing heat of the finals, and followed that up with a run of 5.727. Not only were these times approximately one second faster than his previous personal best times, but the run of 5.727 seconds was only .25 seconds off Iranian climber Reza Alipour’s world record.

Akiyo Noguchi, too, surprised many fans and pundits by winning the speed-climbing portion of the Japan Cup. She also placed second in the Japan Cup’s lead climbing.

In a year when most international competitions were canceled— or limited to whittled rosters as a result of the pandemic’s travel restrictions—any national results have become the main indicators of competitors’ developmental progress in all disciplines. The Japanese press’s continued coverage of climbing, as the country’s de rigueur sport, even during the pandemic, has piqued the nation’s interest in the various competitors’ progress. “I feel that climbing has gained a lot of recognition through the media appearances of the athletes,” says Miyazawa at B-Pump. The Tokyo Olympics loom on the horizon as an opportunity for all Japan’s climbing components to come together—the four Olympians representing a much larger talent pool, and their progress signifying a greater climbing-cultural focus on collective improvement as a means for individual triumph.

John Burgman lived in South Korea for five years, during which time he traveled to Japan on numerous occasions. He is the author of High Drama: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of American Competition Climbing.

G Y M C L I M B E R M A G . C O M 13

TEAM ABC SENDS TWO TO TOKYO

Founded in 2005 by a champ, Team ABC keeps turning them out

Standing: Chris Danielson, Ryan Arment, Robyn Erbesfield Raboutou.

Front row: Colin Duffy and Brooke Raboutou, both Olympic team members.

14 G Y M C L I M B E R

JESS TALLEY / LOUDER THAN 11

By Alison Osius

Aix-les-Bains, France, 1995. The American climber Robyn Erbesfield, who was living in Southern France, had won the overall World Cup title each year since 1992. But that season Laurence Guyon of France had come on like a meteor: with two wins and a second—to Erbesfield—in the previous three World Cup events. Guyon, 25, also won the Masters of SerreChevalier and Arco that year, the best of her career.

“The women’s scene is changing,” Baptiste Briand, a climber-writer on the French team, wrote in Climbing at the time, “with Robyn Erbesfield no longer always winning.” No one wins forever.

Erbesfield entered the grand finale trailing in points for the first time in four years, but she had won strong in Birmingham, England, just two weeks earlier. For her part, Guyon was in her home country and had the World Cup practically in hand. To keep the crown, Erbesfield, 32, would not only have to win, but Guyon must place an unlikely fourth or below. Still, Robyn was always up for a fight.

In finals, Guyon missed some shakeouts, and fell low, for fifth. Erbesfield won the event—and the World Cup. Four consecutive World Cup wins and the ability to thrive when the chips are down? Erbesfield has a lot to offer.

JESS TALLEY / LOUDER THAN 11

DREAM TEAM Team ABC, which she founded in Boulder in 2005 along with, and within, the broader-based ABC Kids Climbing, comprises 120 athletes and has fielded one half of the U.S. Olympic team: Colin Duffy, 17, of Broomfield, and Brooke Raboutou, 20, the daughter of Robyn and her husband, Didier Raboutou of France, also a former world titleist in climbing. Their son, Shawn, is one of the few ever to climb 8C / V16. Didier built the original facility walls and continues to create and adjust training equipment.

“Ask Didier,” Erbesfield Raboutou (her married name, or simply Raboutou) says whenever a team member requests, say, a new pulley system. “You’ll probably have it tomorrow.”

Team ABC (for Agility, Balance, Coordination), an arm of ABC Kids, has won nine national-championship team titles.

Asked how many individual national titles her crew has won, Erbesfield Raboutou does not venture to estimate. The head coach, Ryan Arment, says when asked, “I count eight firstplace nationals medals from 2017 to 2020 for individuals at youth comps” in different age groups and genres. Colin Duffy alone is a 10-time National Champion.

Other title-holders include Megan Mascarenas, who with

Some fun. Erbesfield Raboutou speaks; Colin Duffy is floored.

FOUR CONSECUTIVE WORLD CUPS AND THE ABILITY TO THRIVE WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN? ERBESFIELD HAS A LOT TO OFFER. her mother traveled twice a week—an hour and 45 minutes each way—from Colorado Springs to be on the team, and who won two Bouldering World Cups at Vail starting at age 17; Margo Hayes (also the first woman to climb confirmed 5.15); and Joe Goodacre (speed). That doesn’t count the earlier champions Angie Payne and Emily Harrington, whom Erbesfield Raboutou coached before founding the team.

Staff is a who’s who as well, and she adamantly credits the members as outstanding: “I didn’t create this program on my own. We’re a team.”

Past coaches there include Matt Fultz, Meagan Martin, Alex Puccio, Nina Williams and John Brosler. Daniel Woods has guest-coached, and he

W W W . G Y M C L I M B E R M A G . C O M 15

“I HAVE BEEN ON TEAM ABC FOR PRETTY MUCH MY WHOLE LIFE,” CAMPBELL SARINOPOULOS, 17, SAYS.

climbs and trains at the facility. The 12 current coaches (13 if you count Robyn) are Arment, Claire Gordon, Connor Dykes, Joslynn Peterson, and Max Burgess. Chris Danielson, longtime international route setter, has also become part of the pre-Olympic coaching apparatus for Colin Duffy and Brooke Raboutou.

Over the years at least two kids’ families have moved to Boulder for the program. Natalia Grossman, 18, was born in Santa Cruz, California, but came to Boulder in 2015 for the climbing friends she’d made and to join Team ABC. Olivia Kosanovich, 16, and her family moved there from Breckenridge in 2016.

Grossman has now aged out of the program, but is full bore: She won the 2020 Bouldering Open Nationals and, in March, the bouldering event at the National Team Trials, in Memphis.

16 G Y M C L I M B E R

Moment of truth.

Brooke Raboutou came through when it counted, making the Olympics at the first qualifier, the Hachioji Combined Championships, Japan, August 2019.

The Hachioji event was the first of three opportunities to qualify.

Team ABC is youth-only, ending at age 18.

“Then we usually recruit them as coaches,” Erbesfield Raboutou says with a chuckle.

The team has also drawn in the children of peers: such as the upand-comer Bayes Wilder, age 10, son of Matt Wilder, former pro climberboulderer-American Ninja Warrior.

Erbesfield Raboutou says Bayes is “as amazing or more than Brooke or Ashima”—Ashima Shiraishi, a national champion and top rock climber from New York—“were at that age.”

Another promising climber is Campbell Sarinopoulos, in the program since age 4, who has just made the U.S. Team, at 17 one of the two youngest on it.

“I have been on Team ABC for pretty much my whole life,” Campbell says, calling it a second family. “Our coaches always know the right balance of training hard and having fun ....

Growing up at ABC among such strong climbers really made me want to strive to be better.”

Every year she looks forward to the training camps, she says: “It was always so fun to travel and just have fun all together as a team.” She calls practices with her peers fun as well, and says she’s learned “how to be a part of a team and be supportive and encouraging even though we often compete against each other.”

Asked for climbing takeaways, she points to the emphasis the coaches place on visualization in practices, “which is now something I use all the time in my own climbing.”

Colin Duffy, soon to pack his bags

JESS TALLEY / LOUDER THAN 11

YOUTH AND PROMISE

BE A CHAMPION Back to Aix. Reflecting upon it now, Erbesfield Raboutou says, “What I learned at that event was we can only manage what we can. I couldn’t control her result. I could give my best effort, and that was enough.” She recalls awaiting her turn, telling herself, Now’s the moment. You do it. Get out

18 G Y M C L I M B E R

Colin Duffy, in the program since age 8, is preparing there for Tokyo.

there. Be a champion. She doesn’t remember the route or even whether she topped it, only that she climbed with confidence.

Starting Team ABC years later was a convergence of elements, meshing her history, a longtime interest in children, and the fact that her own two loved to climb and would want to be with friends. Erbesfield Raboutou herself has always kept climbing nails hard. Over the years she has done some dozen 5.14s including (Didier’s) route Bad Attitude, at St. Antonin Noble Val, France, and Welcome to Tijuana, Rodellar, Spain, a 5.14b. In recent months she has sent four V11s.

Asked whether she was born to compete or teach, Erbesfield Raboutou pauses, then says, “I would say teach, but I wouldn’t be a coach without being a competitor. I am just really strong-minded and determined … [with] strong mental aspects for climbing that I teach my kids.

“They’re the champions. They come to us with the drive, and we help them.”

JESS TALLEY / LOUDER THAN 11

for Tokyo, started at the program at age 8, training with the team weekly. He says, “I think Team ABC has been so good for me because it is such a motivating environment with great coaches, strong athletes, and an excellent facility.

The constant motivation helped me excel at a fast pace and helped mold me into the climber I am today.” He is preparing for the Games with the team, “since I have a structured training schedule and I’m constantly surrounded by other psyched athletes.”

Asked her operating philosophy, Erbesfield Raboutou says, “We really are trying to initiate success through capturing this young person when they’re psyched—making up games, keeping it fun, making the kids want to be there and work hard.

“Number one is building great humans, celebrating who they are as a person and as a teammate first and foremost.”

Kids are expected to develop a variety of skills and are not permitted to focus on one discipline outright. Unlike the regular climbing gyms where most teams are based, the facility is not open to the public.

TEXAS TOKYO to

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TEAM USA

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BY JOHN BURGMAN

Colin Duffy

Nathaniel Coleman

As a multi-time Youth World Champion, Duffy won back-to-back in lead in his age division in 2017 and 2018, a sign that he would be a force to be reckoned with when he entered the adult scene. One year later, Duffy made waves in a stacked adult field at USA Climbing’s 2019 Combined Invitational, placing fourth. Duffy is the youngest of the American Olympians, and is a member of Team ABC, the squad that produced Olympian Brooke Raboutou.

Like Raboutou, Duffy excels in all disciplines, evidenced by the fact that he posted a personal best speed time—twice—in a single competition in 2020 (the aforementioned Combined Invitational). Duffy, 17, may be young, but it is hard to argue that he doesn’t have a shot at an Olympic podium— especially if he continues to improve in the coming weeks and months.

Coleman has long been considered one of the best American boulderers, particularly due to quadruple wins at USA Climbing’s Bouldering Nationals (in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020). Still, his second-place at the United States’ inaugural Combined Invitational in January 2019—where he placed behind Zach Galla—was something of a revelation. There, it became evident that Coleman was not just broadening his skills in the other disciplines, he was approaching true mastery in all of them. More recently, Coleman showcased his veteran savvy and his unwavering self-belief at the National Team Trials in March of 2021. When his initial attempts were unsuccessful, Coleman stayed composed; with time for one final attempt, he dialed in the beta for a big deadpoint finish beyond the zone hold, and topped the problem.

When it counts the most, Coleman is able to execute with a combination of skill and poise.

Kyra Condie Condie is as credentialed as any competitor in the combined discipline heading into the Olympics, and won the combined portion of the Pan-American Championship in 2018. The following year she won the inaugural combined Invitational hosted by USA Climbing.

Condie punched her ticket for the Tokyo Olympics by placing seventh in the combined discipline at the Toulouse qualification event. Amid it all, she made the novel combined format seem as if it had existed for decades. Condie had severe spinal curvature as a child, eventually leading to the surgical fusion of 10 vertebrae. “Most of the time I don’t notice my back at all when I’m climbing, but when I do, it can be really discouraging,” she said on March 12, 2021—a day that marked the 11-year anniversary of her surgery. Suffice it to say, it all makes Condie’s climbing accomplishments and her Olympic qualification even more impressive.

Brooke Raboutou Raboutou was the first American climber to qualify for the Olympics.

While most competitors forced themselves to appreciate the combined discipline upon the announcement of climbing’s Olympic inclusion, Raboutou has had an affinity for the full complement of lead climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing since her days on the youth circuit. Podium places in the lead and bouldering disciplines of the National Team Trials earlier this year proved she is in peak competition form as the postponed Olympics approach.

Raboutou is arguably the most popular and well-known American climber right now behind Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell. If she can continue to parlay her Olympic exposure into mainstream attention—while still winning competitions at the highest level—Raboutou could reach levels of celebrity in the social media age that no other American climbing competitor has.

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THE CHAMPION FACTORY

Team Slovenia has the best competition athlete in history, and there’s more talent

By Delaney Miller / Photos by Jan Virt

Here’s a fun fact: Slovenia is the size of New Jersey, America’s fifth-smallest state. If you lived in Slovenia instead of the U.S., on average you’d live a little over a year longer, and be 44 percent less likely to be obese, according to a random comparison site on the internet.

Slovenia is doing something right and is also home to some of the best climbers in the world. Janja Garnbret, for one, more World Cup victories than any climber, in history, ever. Her teammates Mia Krampl, Lučka Rakovec, Vita Lukan, Jernej Kruder, Gregor Vezonik, and Domen Škofic all make regular appearances in the final rounds of World Cups. And let’s not forget about Mina Markovič and Maja Vidmar, both retired, some of the world’s best while they were still in action.

Save for perhaps Japan, there isn’t a more stacked country than Slovenia. So what in the world is in their water? Their gyms are intimate, and set less for birthday parties and more for those looking to perfect the craft. And in a small country, the top athletes often train together. Those factors likely help. Plus, their outdoor crags aren’t too bad. Ever heard of Osp? (Hint: it’s a popular destination for international climbers.)

But of course, magic is magic.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Zan Lovenjak Sudar digs deep during Team Slovenia’s 2020 comp simulation practice, at E4 Boulderhalle in Nuremberg, Germany.

The Slovenian Team—from right to left are Katja Kadic, Mia Krampl and Lucka Rakovec—plus Alex Megos, from Germany. Lucka Rakovec, at the same practice.

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Luka Potocar snatching a sloper at the 2020 comp simulation practice. Lucka Rakovec captured during an elegant dismount off the top of a boulder problem. Domen Svab, team coach.

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VLADEK ZUMR

Team Slovenia has a deep roster of top World Cup competitors that extends beyond Garnbret and Rakovec.

Witness Vita Lukan, seen here on her way to placing fifth at the Bouldering World Cup, in Meiringen, Switzerland.

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A Forced Rivalry A forced rivalry—that’s what you get when you have two teammates and only one Olympic spot. Since their fellow Slovenian Janja Garnbret (left) had already qualified for the Olympics, Lucka Rakovec (below) and Mia Krampl, both 18 at the time, went head to head for Slovenia’s other spot in the final round of the Toulouse Olympic Qualifier. It was both a heartbreaking and inspirational showdown between two friends and closely-matched competitors.

Rakovec looked poised to win after placing sixth in Speed and third in Bouldering, while Krampl was seventh in both disciplines. To win the Olympic invitation, Krampl needed to place first in Lead, and Rakovec had to finish third or lower.

The final lead route, an endurance fest up a series of volumes and crimps, culminated in a difficult move out of a roof and to a volume. The top five lead climbers ultimately fell on the same move, except that Krampl alone stuck the hold before falling. Krampl placed first and Rakovec third based on time.

Krampl was awarded the Olympic invitation for a final score just five points less than Rakovec’s (lowest score wins). The teammates could be seen hugging each other following the event, each flushed with tears, but still cracking smiles.

Rakovec later spoke with Gym Climber on results: “Bad results are really hard to cope with, but bad results don’t always reflect how prepared you are. Sometimes you make mistakes, and the best thing you can get from ‘bad’ competitions is to learn from your mistakes. If you try to see it from a positive point of view, you can see your weak points and [the] stuff you have to work on, so one day everything will click together, and the results you want will come too.”

VLADEK ZUMR (UPPER LEFT)

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Janja Garnbret eyeing her next move. Garnbret is the most successful competition climber in history. Lucka Rakovec, all smiles after matching at the top. Gorazd Hren, Slovenia’s team manager.

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ERIN STERKENGURG/ IFSC

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THE FEW FROM THE FAR REACHES

North America, Europe, and Asia are sending dozens of climbers to the Tokyo Olympics. In Africa and Oceania, only two nations have fielded competitors.

By Owen Clarke

Japan, France, Germany, Slovenia, the United States. Akiyo Noguchi, Janja Garnbret, Alex Megos, Adam Ondra, Nathaniel Coleman. The Olympic roster is packed with recognizable countries and names.

The majority of climbing’s first 40 Olympians have competed at IFSC events for years, and come from nations with a long history of competitive climbing.

Of the 19 countries represented, 17 are part of North America, Europe, and Asia.

Those three continents have hosted almost every major international competitive climbing event in two decades. That said, two outliers are fielding Olympic climbing teams this summer ….

SOUTH AFRICA The African nation qualified one female and one male climber, Erin Sterkenburg, age 18, and Christopher Cosser, 20. Each scored first place in the IFSC African Championships in Cape Town last December. South Africa is the single Olympic team representing the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent.

While athletes from South Africa have been competing in away IFSC events since 2011, competitive climbing is relatively new on the African continent.

The African Championships was the nation’s first live-broadcasted climbing competition, and besides South Africa, only Uganda sent competitors. Simon Ofoyuru and Credo Kasemiire of Uganda, attending their first competition, scored 14th and 8th in the men’s and women’s fields, respectively. Uganda’s first indoor rock gym was built in 2018.

Erin Sterkenburg Sterkenburg dominated her bracket, winning the trifecta of Bouldering, Speed, and Lead with a perfect score. Now the Durban native will represent her country and the African continent at the Olympic Games, all in the midst of her final year of high school.

She was introduced to climbing only in 2017, after joining her high school’s climbing club during freshman year. The African Championships was just her third IFSC event, after Youth Worlds in Moscow and Arco in 2018 and 2019.

“It’s still a bit surreal that I’m going to the Olympics,” she says. “I’m so excited to In December of 2020, Erin Sterkenburg of Durban placed first in the African Championships, in Cape Town, South Africa, qualifying for Tokyo.

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Chris Cosser Born in Johannesburg, Cosser has been climbing since 2012 and attended the IFSC Youth World Championships annually after his first time, in 2014. The Youth World Championships is the only international event South Africa has attended as a team in years past.

In 2019, after finishing high school, Cosser traveled on the competition circuit, attending the majority of European World Cups and his last Youth World Cup, in Arco, earning 14th overall in the Youth World Championships in Arco that year. Since then, however, he had not competed until the African qualifying event.

Cosser is also a strong climber outside and has sent boulders up to 8B (V13) and sport routes up to 8b+ (5.14a).

On a recent trip to Cape Town, he took down seven boulders of 8A (V11) and above.

“On paper, I’m a stronger boulderer, but I actually prefer sport climbing,” he says.

“I’m more psyched on the indoor scene at the moment, but

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Christopher Cosser of Johannesburg was first among men at the event, in December.

AUSTRALIA Australia will send one male and one female climber to Tokyo: Oceana Mackenzie, 19, and Tom O’Halloran, 28.

Australians have made their mark on the international scene for many years via hard climbing and colorful figures like Chris Webb Parsons, who appeared in the Vail Bouldering World Cup finals in 2011 with his head shaved tonsure-style after losing a bet. Still, the country has never fielded hosts of competitors like European and Asian nations have.

Australia, like South Africa, is the sole country from its continent to put up an Olympic team. Australia’s climbers earned their slots at the IFSC Oceania Championships, duking it out with New Zealand.

Oceana Mackenzie The Melbourne native swept the Oceania Championships like Sterkenburg, with no falls. A climber since age 12, Mackenzie attended the Youth World Championships in 2016, and led the Youth B Female bracket at Youth Worlds in 2017, scoring first in Speed, Lead, and Bouldering. In 2018, she made semifinals at her first two Lead World Cups and first Bouldering World Cup. She competed in a slew of World Cups in 2019, breaking into the international spotlight during the season’s first Bouldering World Cup, in Meiringen, with a sixth place.

CHRISTOPHER COSSER/ IFSC

compete, and a little nervous, but most of all I’m just so grateful to have the opportunity to go, and come back having learned so much and share that with the country.”

Sterkenburg travels to Johannesburg once a month to train Speed, since her gym in Durban has no Speed wall.

“I’m most focused on Lead, and Bouldering is a close second.

Speed is definitely not what I’m good at,” she adds, laughing.

“But I’m working on it!” She hopes to study in America after graduating high school at the end of 2021. “I’m thinking about architecture or engineering, but I don’t know yet.”

Fresh on the scene compared to well-known females like Janja Garnbret and Akiyo Noguchi, Sterkenburg says, “That’s what’s craziest to me. Those people are my idols, and now I’m competing against them. I’ve been watching them in comps since I started climbing. I’m so excited to watch them climb in real life, and be able to talk to these climbers, who have achieved such crazy things. I’m also sure it’ll make me push myself even harder.

“I don’t have any expectations. I just want to climb my best,” she says. “On that day, I just want to feel like I climbed the best I could have.”

I start burning up and not being that psyched to come to the gym if I don’t climb outside as well,” he said. “It’s a fine balance.” Post-Olympics, he hopes to apply to a university in the United States or Europe.

“My goal for the Olympics is growth and development within the African community,” he says. “We’re still so far behind, that to close the performance gap is unrealistic, but to have development, and to hopefully get sponsorship into the sport in South Africa and Africa as a whole, that would be the perfect outcome.”

IT’S OFFICIAL !

Josh Larson The USA National Team Head Coach, playing on the Grasshopper Board in Salt Lake City.

-Boone Speed photo

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Tom O’Halloran For O’Halloran, competing in a Olympics is a lifelong dream come true. “I was 8 when the Sydney Olympics were run in 2000,” he tells Gym Climber. “We didn’t have a TV, so we went to a friend’s house to watch the opening ceremony. I didn’t know what the Olympics was. I just remember sitting on the floor watching it. There were all these people waving flags, wearing track suits, looking super happy. The moment my dad explained it to me, I was like, ‘Whoa. I want to be a part of this.’

I didn’t know any of the athletes, but just watching how [the Olympics] brought everyone together was incredible.”

O’Halloran, who hails from Blackheath, was a relatively strong athlete as a kid, playing a variety of sports including cricket and soccer, and was “good-ish, but never at an Olympic level,” he said. When he found climbing in 2004 at the age of 12, however, he realized that he could compete at a national, if not international level. He went on to climb in IFSC Youth Worlds in 2007 and 2008, but shortly after graduating high school, he turned away from competitive climbing. “With it not being an Olympic sport, I was just like, ‘Aww, whatever. It is what it is. Maybe it’s cool that climbing doesn’t have to be a part of that scene.’”

Currently based in the Blue Mountains with his partner of 10 years, Amanda Watts, and their 7-year-old daughter, O’Halloran works as a rope-access technician, performing

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ABOVE: Oceana Mackenzie of Melbourne at the Oceania Championships, held the same weekend as the African Championships.

BELOW: Tom O’Halloran, male qualifier, from Blackheath.

NATHAN MCNEIL/IFSC (BOTH)

Like Sterkenburg in her final year of high school, Mackenzie has put her studies on hold.

Though she has been climbing for seven years now, she wasn’t sure about her Olympic potential until recently. “People were like, ‘Oh you know, keep training and see how we go,’ so it was always in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t super serious about [the Olympics] up until maybe 2019,” she told the Australian newspaper The Age. She also discussed the mental component of the sport for her. “I love the problem solving,” she said. “I am a pretty big introvert and competitive, so I love the challenge of figuring it out and then doing the climb.”

She tells Gym Climber, “It feels amazing to represent my country and sport in the Olympics. I never could have imagined climbing in the Olympics a few years ago. It’s going to be super exciting.”

high-angle assignments on sites such as coal mines, wind farms, and ironore processing facilities. He is a strong climber on rock, with sport sends up to 9a (5.14d) and boulders at V13, and for the majority of the last decade he has focused completely on outdoor climbing.

After leaving the comp scene in 2010, he stayed away for seven years.

Upon learning that climbing would become an Olympic sport, however, he jumped back in. “At first I was on the fence about it,” he says, “but I just couldn’t turn that opportunity down, and I didn’t want to half-ass it.” After a few national comps in 2017 and 2018, he returned to the IFSC stage in 2019, competing in World Cups in Briançon and Chamonix and the Hachioji World Championships, finishing 32nd in Lead at Hachioji.

O’Halloran says that while he was at first critical of the combined Olympic format, he’s changed his mind. “I think it’s a stroke of genius, actually. I didn’t want to do speed climbing initially. I thought, ‘Speed climbing doesn’t count.’

But I’ve come around. I’m in favor of it. I think it’s an awesome leveler.

“For me, the answer to the question, ‘Who is the best rock climber in the world?’ is the climber who can do the best across the most disciplines, not the one who is the most niche. This format gives you the ability to answer that question. It brings more people back into the mix.”

Today’s blooming Olympic tree started in the ground

By Alison Osius 34 G Y M C L I M B E R

CREDIT

ROOTS

Lynn Hill at the Berkeley World Cup, 1990. This early event attracted a sparse audience, though thousands were packing houses in Europe. Later, the Bouldering World Cup became a major draw at the annual Mountain Games in Vail.

Before there was an Olympic team of Brooke Raboutou, Kyra Condie, Nathaniel Coleman, Colin Duffy …. Before Ashima Shiraishi was fifth at a World Cup in Chamonix and Sean Bailey ninth in Toulouse in 2019 ... or Alex Puccio and Megan Mascarenas each won Vail twice between 2009 and 2018, and Sean Bailey took silver, or Puccio won at three Arco Rockmasters … or Alex Johnson won a WC in Switzerland and Daniel Woods won Vail in 2010, or Johnson won it in 2008, with Paul Robinson third ….

Before Sasha DiGiulian took overall gold at the 2011 World Championships in Arco; Emily Harrington won the Serre Che Invitational in France in 2006; Lisa Rands won a World Cup in Lecco, Italy, in 2002; or Katie Brown was first at Arco in 1996 and in a WC in France in 1999 … or Chris Sharma won a World Cup in Kranj in 1997 and led the world on rock ….

Before all those and with a bow to the many others who have made finals fields and top 10s or advanced a round, were the first from this country, who faced more obstacles and gained more success than you may know. Those who headlined, organized and created the early events paved the way for the sport today and its entrance into the Olympics.

TRY SOME TRIVIA

BETH WALD (BOTH)

An old climbing-trivia question I used to ask at tradeshow events was: Who was the first American male to win a climbing World Cup? People would guess. Maybe Ron Kauk?

Kauk made some podiums, but no ... it was: Jim Karn, La Riba, Spain, September 1988.

Karn was the most dominant American male climber of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he committed to the emergent hard-climbing and comp scene of Europe, moving there for many months at various times. He also always excelled outdoors, with, for example, an early repeat of Marc LeMenestrel’s famous 1986 8b+ / 5.14a Le Minimum.

Karn says honestly that at La Riba, he hadn’t thought he would make it through two rounds.

“The event lasted several days, not the standard two or three of later World Cups,” he says. “I remember struggling every day to barely make it through the elimination rounds, but I seemed to do better as I got more tired, while a lot of guys, who were better climbers, seemed to maybe perform less well or make mistakes as their fatigue increased. Or maybe they just got bored and wanted to go home.” Karn made it clear to finals.

“In those days, the rule was that wherever the climber touched highest on the wall was marked as his or her high point, not the last actual hold touched,” he says. “Therefore, you would always try to slap the wall as high as possible as you were falling off. It was a terrible rule, and I was glad when it changed.” In the final, he fell near the top and slapped high, gaining the lead. Marc LeMenestrel of France went next, and Karn sat back expecting to dip to second.

“Marc strolled to the last quickdraw, then clipped in and sat down. Somehow, he had confused the last quickdraw for the anchor. It was a simple mistake,” Karn says, “and handed me a win I didn’t deserve.” (Read on, though.)

Catherine Destivelle of France was an early top climber, succeeded as Hill’s main competition

by Isabelle Patissier and Nanette Raybaud, both also French, and Robyn Erbesfield of the USA.

HILL WAS THE FIRST AMERICAN TO WIN A COMP, AND WAS TO BECOME THE DOMINANT WOMAN COMPETITOR FOR YEARS, ULTIMATELY WINNING SOME 30 INTERNATIONAL EVENTS. Back to those trade shows. Asking who was the first American woman to win a World Cup would have been too easy. Or would it?

The original American standout in the novel craze of professional comps, Lynn Hill was invited after the Italian climber-organizer Marco Scolaris saw her cranking Take It Or Leave It, a 5.12d in the Verdon Gorge, in June 1986. He urged her to attend the second annual Sport Roccia, at Arco, that summer.

“Lynn, you must come to this competition next month,” he said, as recalled in her memoir, Climbing Free.

“There is only one other woman who climbs strong like you. … Catherine Destivelle. She’s French.” Top of the pack, Hill and Destivelle were to vie for wins at early events before Destivelle returned to mountain pursuits.

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Americans won an event. Erbesfield won the whole World Cup from 1992 through ’95; in 1993 she was first in every comp she entered. In a storybook finish, Lynn Hill won her very last comp, in Birmingham, England, in 1992 before retiring to pursue her broader interests in climbing. Karn was third in the overall World Cup standings in 1990 and remains the only American male to make that podium.

Today we have an Olympic team, and Robyn and Didier Raboutou’s daughter, Brooke Raboutou, age 20, is on it. We have gyms, teams and programs, we have coaches and the USAC and a training center in Salt Lake. About 10 Americans can be expected to show up at an international event. And whereas the expenses are still sky high, there are sponsorships and salaries, and for the last few years the USAC has been able to offer travel costs to some team members. Previously even tip-top professional climbers such as Alex Puccio in 2015 struggled with the costs of attending the five or six annual World Cup events.

In the earliest days, Lynn was generally the only one going, and unusual in enjoying an early sponsorship, from Chouinard Equipment. Many comp purses followed for her and Robyn Erbesfield.

JIM THORNBURG (BOTH)

Hill was the first American to win a comp, and was to become the dominant woman competitor for years, ultimately winning some 30 international events. She was number one at the Grand Prix d’Escalade in Troubat in 1986, and the Bercy Masters in Paris and the Arco Invitational in 1987. She won cash and a brand-new car at an event in Munich in early 1988. But (for trivia or documentary purposes) was Munich a World Cup? Recently I chased her down to where she was climbing in Hueco Tanks and asked. She didn’t remember. Yup, it was all a long time ago.

I finally turned up the event’s name: the 1989 German Free Climbing Championship. After that event, Hill went climbing at Buoux for a few days before the season’s first World Cup, in Leeds, UK. But in Buoux on May 9 she had a serious accident, falling from the belay on a warm-up after neglecting to complete her tie-in knot. After recovering from her injuries, which included a dislocated elbow, she won at the World Cup in Lyon, France, that autumn.

Meanwhile, Robyn Erbesfield came out of nowhere to win at Leeds, the first of the official UIAA World Cup circuit (though the term World Cup was in use previously, with UIAA sanctions and World Cup points for trial events), which would make her the first American woman to win one—a tenet she confirms, as does High Drama, a history of the comp movement by John Burgman.

Robyn shared the top of the podium with Jerry Moffatt of England. Leeds was only the UK’s second comp, after The Yorkshire Open run by DR Walls the same year.

Also little known today is that Karn, always a top boulderer, won the 1991 and 1992 L’Open International de Bloc à L’Argentière-la-Bessée, France, the second time sharing the podium with Erbesfield—the first time two

LEFT: Robyn Erbesfield won the overall World Cup a near-unbelievable four years running.

RIGHT: Doug Englekirk, Jim Karn and Scott Franklin, three leaders in the early American scene, share ideas.

Karn, the top American male of his era, then committed to the circuit in Europe. Facing page: Timy Fairfield, of the next gen, won a major bouldering competition, as had Karn (twice).

Still, for most early aspirants, joining the circuit was a good way to go broke and worse, maxing out your credit cards. Most climbers lacked the funding or ability to stay in Europe and train and compete consistently. But a few made it happen …

EARLY FORAYS Hill, Erbesfield, Karn, Shelley Presson and Scott Franklin were the first leading Americans to commit to comps and the hard-climbing scene in Europe, all moving to France for various amounts of time. Jennifer Souders Cole, who made finals at the first Snowbird event, in 1988, traveled to Europe for the full season the next year, and others went to assorted events.

Travel and organization were difficult, with few other Americans consistently around to confer with.

“I think the time I spent in Europe training was … like war,” Timy Fairfield, a subsequent strong competitor, said in a 2009 interview in Climbing. “You don’t have as much support, there weren’t as many Americans to lean on to speak the language.”

Various early climber-competitors traveled together in knots, whoever could afford or chose to go, usually attending events while on climbing trips. I was among them, bookending comps on either end of, say, a two-week trip. Another was Hans Florine, who won the first International Speed Championships, in 1991.

We crowded into a moldy basement near the Frankenjura and, another year, a moldier house near Buoux.

All comp climbers were rock climbers; I remember Alain Gherson of France, an alpinist, for crying out loud, making a podium. Most people trained outdoors. After any comp, they’d brush off the results by saying, “Let’s go climbing!” Today’s traveling competitors might typically spend a day or two on rock on such a trip, but mostly climb in gyms.

It was even a bit of a surprise in 1990 when Dale Goddard and Geoff Weigand of the U.S. and Australia arrived and spent the first five days or so at gyms in Belgium, mainly one called Blueberry Hill, near Brussels. They explained to us how great it was. We listened curiously and went back to Buoux and Volx.

MICHAEL CLARK

THE FOUNDRY AND OTHER CRUCIBLES The Foundry in Sheffield, the UK’s best-known early gym, opened in 1991. Most climbers still gravitated to outdoor areas, made life decisions accordingly. In 1991, Timy Fairfield and Kurt Smith picked me up at the airport in Nuremberg for a World Cup. They had been climbing in the Frankenjura—and in the “Psycho Cellar,” a private co-op in the basement of an apartment building in Erlangen. “Low ceiling height so everything was steep as hell,” Timy says. “Loud speed metal music!”

In this country the first climbing gym to open was the Vertical Club in Seattle in 1987. Over the next 10 years some 40 gyms arose nationwide. Those included the Front in Salt Lake and the Boston Rock Gym, both in 1989; the Boulder Rock Club in 1991; and, in 1992, Vertical Endeavors in Minneapolis, the Phoenix Rock Gym, and Thrillseekers (in an old porn theater) in Denver.

The Clipper City gym opened in Baltimore that year but burned down in 1995. The Cleveland Rock Gym and Philadelphia Rock Gym were 1994, and the Crux in San Luis Obispo; Cathedral Rock

“I LOOKED UP TO ALL OF THESE PEOPLE WHO WERE OLDER THAN ME AND MUCH MORE ACCOMPLISHED AT COMPETITION CLIMBING AND TRAINING ABROAD THAN I WAS WHEN I FIRST HIT THE SCENE. SCOTTY [FRANKLIN] IS THE MAN! HE WAS SO DIALED.” Gym in Lehighton, Pennsylvania; Go Vertical in Stamford, Connecticut; and Mission Cliffs, the Bay Area, in 1995.

In 1997 the first Earth Treks opened, in Columbia, Maryland.

American comps consisted of bouldering contests in California and Arizona until the big bang of an onsight international event at Snowbird in 1988. Snowbird also hosted a World Cup in 1989, but then the impresario, Jeff Lowe, turned his focus to a national series.

A standout in that growing national scene, Timy Fairfield was on the second wave of Americans to dig in in Europe.

After traveling often to compete, he moved to France in 1995 at age 25.

Fairfield recalls: “I looked up to all of these people who were older than me W W W . G Y M C L I M B E R M A G . C O M 37

THE BIGGER PICTURE In 1987, the UIAA formed a commission, which met for three days in Chambery, France, to formulate early comp tenets and rules. I attended, sent by the American Alpine Club, which subsequently provided seed money for the American Sport Climbing Federation. Small in membership, the ASCF was run by Ralph Erenzo, Peter Darmi, and eventually Hans Florine. Its youth arm took off and separated as the Junior Competition Climbing Association (JCCA). The ASCF ran various events, including a successful National at Hunter Mountain, New York, in 1993, but lapsed 38 G Y M C L I M B E R

A happy Robyn Erbesfield right after winning Leeds.

after Florine’s departure in 1996. In 2003 it reemerged and ultimately became today’s USA Climbing (USAC).

Another Chambery attendee was Marco Scolaris, who became president of the UIAA Commission for Competition Climbing, eventually founding the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), where he remains president.

Sasha Akalski of Bulgaria (now Toronto), another at Chambery, was jubilant upon the 2016 announcement of Olympic inclusion. “Our dream came true!” he posted on Facebook.

“Congratulations, everybody.”

While comps in Europe attracted thousands from early on, World Cups on American soil fell away for many years after a sparsely attended one in 1990 in Berkeley, California. But the inclusion of climbing in the 1995 Extreme Games in Providence, Rhode Island, staged by Erenzo, Jordan Mills, and others, was key, and repeated as the X Games, run by Jim Waugh. The Bouldering World Cup in Vail, Colorado, starting in 2008, became a marquee event at the annual Mountain Games.

Competition climbing here had scrappy but often shining beginnings.

It rose and faltered and rose anew, part of a thoroughfare—with great competitors; functioning governance; skilled routesetters, hold designers, and wall makers; and a record of spectacular events—that an Olympic committee saw and nodded upon.

Alison Osius attended a dozen international events—as far as she remembers.

IAN J. SMITH

and much more accomplished at competition climbing and training abroad than I was when I first hit the scene. Scotty [Franklin] is the man! He was so dialed in the style when I got to Europe.” Franklin, Karn, Presson, Hill, Erbesfield and Fairfield all spoke or learned to speak French.

“Lynn and Robyn were pivotal to all of our success,” Fairfield goes on. “They helped in innumerable ways ranging from housing, training advice, and mental-game wisdom to helping us with financial opportunities overseas. They included us in well-funded public climbing demonstrations so that we could earn desperately needed money to keep training in Europe. They got us into travel-piece photo shoots so that we could maintain our sponsorships and leverage our images on rock. They knew the professional rock-climbing game and taught us how to play it and survive in Europe.”

Fairfield lived abroad for six years, winning L’Open International de Clamecy, part of the International Bouldering Series that presaged the Bouldering World Cup; he was ranked #1 in Bouldering for six months. He also won the International ’98 Open Difficulty Event in Canteleu, France, and recalls: “The final route was set way too hard, which played to my bouldering gumption along a long lip traverse, where I blew off a clip and gunned for a suicide high point. I took a huge swinging fall and kicked my belayer.”

Fairfield was the first American male to podium at Arco, with a third in bouldering in 1999. He was fortunate enough, as various visitors have been by European teams, to be included in travel and training by the French federation.

Karn has told Ontarioclimbers.com: “I never considered myself to be in the same league as the best World Cup climbers, but … I began to feel like I belonged. The other guys on the World Cup treated me like a peer, even like a friend. The Europeans (and the rest of the world) welcomed me and seemed to really enjoy seeing me do well. I have fantastic memories of being in the highest pressure situations with everything at stake and having my direct competitors do whatever they could to help me.” He considered competing to be a high form of respect.

He adds today: “The French have a saying, ‘Jamais deux sans trois,’ which means ‘Never two without three,’” or that things come in threes. “They said it to me over and over when I won [L’Argentière] the second time”—urging him to return.

“It’s one of my favorite memories from those events.”

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JESS TALLEY/LOUDER THAN 11

JOSH LARSON

TEAM USA HEAD COACH

By Dave Wetmore

Initially a full-time electrician from Massachusetts, this East-Coast climber escaped the grueling monotony of his day job for a life less traveled and has never looked back.

A former competitive climber himself, Larson is a skilled setter and takes an active role in the types of problems the athletes train on. He and a team of visting setters experiment with types of movement the athletes will encounter in competitions.

It is early morning in Salt Lake City and a chill still lingers in the air of the training center—a reclaimed warehouse known as the “TC.” Josh Larson, the head coach of Team USA, quickly punches in a key code and leads me through the side door as he hobbles forward on his crutches, clanking and clattering over the concrete floor. He broke his foot the week before by missing the pads outside at Ibex, a bouldering area near Delta, Utah.

Pausing for a moment, he cranks up the heat and turns on the lights. As the bay bulbs flicker on, Josh sits down cross-legged and says nothing as I scan a 100-footwide spray wall wrapping the room in front of us. It has every angle you could ask for and each square foot is littered with a perfect selection of holds.

“What would make you come to the TC and never have to leave?” Josh asks rhetorically, breaking the silence. “That’s how we started thinking about the build.

These walls are specifically based on Dai Koyamada’s gym, the Project—a famous climbing gym in Japan that many U.S. competitors revere.

The tour continues. Deeper inside the facility is another room full of plywood walls ranging from slab to vert to overhang—a variety of angles designed to mimic sections typically found at international competitions. These walls are either blank, awaiting the next round of intricately calculated problems, or sparsely populated with coordination combos, complex power sequences, and high-risk balance moves.

Later, on the way out, I run my hand across a white sheet of plastic hanging from the ceiling. “What’s up with the plastic room?” I ask, my anticipation for the upcoming week of mock comp setting already brimming. “Looks like something from Breaking Bad.” “It’s so the athletes can train in heat and humidity—a Tokyo simulation,” replies Josh. Inside the enclosure is a custom Grasshopper Board that Josh collaborated on with Jared Roth and Ben Moon. “We are looking for blood, sweat, and tears in there.”

So what experiences and forces in the life of Josh Larson have prepared him for this role—the head coach of Team USA at its inaugural home base—in this moment, as climbing prepares for its debut in the Olympic Games?

Josh Larson has ample competition experience himself—in 2014, he won the Unified Bouldering Championships in Seattle, besting the almighty Jimmy Webb, and went on to place second at Canadian Nationals the same year; in 2015, he finished 3rd at Open Bouldering Nationals—but there’s more to Coach Larson than his former time as a comp climber.

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Larson behind the walls at the TC, where there are enough holds to outfit the gym three times over.

things started to fall apart for Josh— something was missing. For the first time in his life, he felt aimless.

“It really all came crashing down at the same time. Like literally—a crash happened,” says Josh, laughing. “I wrecked my four-wheeler in a race, broke my nose, and almost broke my neck. My lungs got bruised by the impact with my ribs from the fourwheeler crushing me into the dirt.”

Around the same time, his job called for switching out evaporator fans from the inside of negative 50-degree Costco freezers. After a few months of working 15-minute shifts, in and out of the cold all night long, he quit.

A few months later, in 2007, he got divorced and moved back in with his parents.

“I had to figure out what I was going to do with my life,” he says.

With no job, no house, and no marriage, one of Josh’s old electrical apprentices randomly asked him to come climb at Boulder Morty’s over the weekend. Having no intention of picking the sport back up in any

JESS TALLEY/LOUDER THAN 11 (BOTH PAGES)

From the outside, it might look like Josh fell effortlessly into this new role; however, the path that led him here— from rural Massachusetts to the World Cup bouldering circuit to the jungles of Belize—was anything but. Constant change seems to be the only predictable element of Josh’s path. Larson’s fate has always been anchored in climbing the way the roots of a tree are anchored in soil.

He grew up in western Massachusetts in the early 1990s and was slowly exposed to rock climbing. The nearby gneiss boulders and cliffs—tucked away inside the thick forests of the Berkshires—were then only just getting discovered and developed. Life for Josh revolved around other things, like going to church every Wednesday and twice on Sundays, homeschool sessions with his mother all week, and hunting in the woods with his father. As a 10-year-old, Josh sometimes butchered deer for five dollars an hour in the back of a refrigerated trailer. It was not until 1999, during his first time grabbing holds on an artificial wall in Jackson, Wyoming—and firing the hardest route first try—that his parents realized he was a natural at this strange, esoteric sport of climbing.

With no climbing gyms back home in Worcester, Josh decided to set his first problem in the attic with a Metolius starter kit. But after a few weeks, his parents revoked those privileges. “They didn’t want me in the attic anymore because I was breaking sheetrock over the kitchen ceiling,” Josh says, “so I started setting at the local YMCA on a toprope wall next to the racquetball courts.”

After several years of dabbling in the sport, Josh climbed in his first Junior Competitive Climbing Association lead competition at Boulder Morty’s in Nashua, New Hampshire, where Vasya Vorotnikov and Kyle McCabe—two locals that would become some of the strongest American climbers of their generation—taught him how to clip a few minutes before competing. Josh tried to use the single-loop harness that he won in Jackson, but since they are not allowed for leading, he had to rent a normal harness.

“I was one of those guys,” he reminisces. “Maybe I still am secretly.”

As a teenager, Josh played baseball competitively, but eventually he let that go and dedicated all his time to the local climbing team. Head Coach, Steve Buck, a guy that could casually send 5.12 in his approach shoes and rip onearm mono pull-ups, taught Josh the basics of movement.

Through his teens, Josh immersed himself in climbing.

But in 2003, at the age of 18, his parents let him know a truth about the world: He needed to find a job and start making a living.

“Being a professional climber at the time was just not a thing,” Josh says regretfully. “I stopped right in my prime.” He started job shadowing as a plumber, then as a construction worker, framing houses. He finally settled on being an electrician, a role in which he “spent the next four years in Boston eating off food trucks and hanging out with a bunch of dirty plumbers in skyscrapers.”

Years later, after buying a house and getting married,

“I HAD NEVER SEEN ANYONE CLIMB WITH THAT KIND OF RAW EMOTION.”

meaningful way, Josh joined his friend for what he thought would be a casual outing.

“As soon as I started climbing again that day, everything just clicked,” he says. Vasya Vorotnikov—who had never left—was there the day Josh returned. While Josh had been working on 230-volt, three-phase lighting systems inside a BJ’s Wholesale Club, Vorotnikov had done the first ascent of Jaws II, a 5.15a in Rumney, NH. “I realized that I couldn’t be an electrician anymore,” Josh says. And just like that, climbing came back full force into his life.

About a year after Josh rediscovered climbing, I witnessed him for the first time in his natural habitat during my first-ever bouldering competition at Indoor Ascent in Manchester. He was shirtless, wearing cut-off camo shorts, and screaming like his life depended on it while campusing from one Pusher Boss to another on a 40-degree overhang. I had never seen anyone climb with that kind of raw emotion.

When he fell, which was rare, he would get mad enough to make any onlooker feel slightly awkward for watching

Speed climbing is the discipline in which U.S.-qualified Olympians have the least amount of experience.

Larson and Brooke Raboutou go over strategies for speed.

as he muttered profanities through a clenched jaw—red-faced and fists bound up tighter than the Hulk at his first brawl.

I didn’t run into Josh for a year after that. The day I really got to know him was the first time he set at MetroRock, in Everett, MA, where I had already been working for a few years. Early one Monday morning in 2009, he stripped an 80-foot-wide by 35-foottall section of toprope climbing space with an Allen wrench—a formidable task without the advent of the impact driver—and set 10 routes before I even showed up. I remember thinking that I was either going to get fired that afternoon or end up with a new partner to share the brunt of the workload. Fortunately, his work ethic and genuine psych disrupted my routesetting-induced malaise and we ended up setting together four days a week for years after that.

From discovering and scrubbing new boulders to exploring the seediest of the seedy bars in Boston, we became tight. And when the days got long and our shifts grew menial, like changing out the 18th T-nut of the week from behind the dusty, dank, spider-web laden corners of welded iron and concrete walls, he somehow maintained a cheery disposition in the face of our drudgery.

“Easy money Dave! Keep turning that wrench. Eeeeasy money!” he would yell from behind the wall, precariously positioned in the dark with vice-grips clamped to the misthreaded T-nut while I cranked on it out front with a socket wrench.

Most people know Josh for his playful personality, but few are familiar with his intensely focused and dedicated side. When he had a goal, whether it was a climb or a comp, he

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More than climbing hard grades, Josh has always been into discovering and establishing new climbs.

“My happy place is hanging off a rope on the side of an untapped cliff or boulder with no one else around, scrubbing holds, and wondering if it goes,” says Josh, who dedicated multiple seasons to establishing first ascents in Puerto Rico and the Grand Tetons, in addition to several New England classics. “I love new routes and boulders more than sending hard. It’s just never quite the same feeling with a guidebook

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ABOVE: Larson on Splash of Red (V10), Rocklands, South Africa. BELOW: Cody Grozski and Larson in the TC discussing a boulder they are setting.

JESS TALLEY/LOUDER THAN 11 JON GLASSBERG/LOUDER THAN 11

would train maniacally for it. Nothing else mattered. While setting and coaching 40 hours a week at the gym, he would somehow manage to train another 20 hours a week, which meant that when I inevitably vanished after work, Josh would stick around for another four hours every weeknight until he was thrashed.

He lived to climb and train—most of all, to try hard.

The year he placed third at Bouldering Nationals, he needed a training wall, so he built one. The year we began setting MetroRock’s Dark Horse together, we needed a new wall to showcase the finals problems, so he built one.

“We had zero expectations and limitations to what was possible and even cool at the time,” he says about our days at MetroRock. “We just did what we wanted and it seemed to work out great in the end. That time helped me see that you can do big things in a small place.”

The same attitude that Josh employed back in those years with his setting—and life in general—is still prevalent in his approach today as the head coach of Team USA and in the TC. Ultimately though, MetroRock was just the beginning for Josh—it was his runway. Olympic-qualified athlete Nathaniel Coleman says that Josh’s setting “is very applicable to the world stage and since we have the open playground that is the TC, Josh is able to keep me constantly challenged in areas that I’m weakest in. He is unafraid of the absurd, which allows for a lot of nuance and creativity.”

in my back pocket.”

In 2010, to fund a climbing trip across the country, he started a production company called Cold House Media with Vince Schaefer and Charlotte Durif—a French climber with a PhD in material science who would later become his wife. After a trip and accompanying video series, “Lost in North America,” he did his stint on the national competition circuit, collecting his fair share of podium finishes. But then, spurred on by his yearning for exploration and adventure, came his biggest adventure to date.

Throughout a year-long documentary series, “A World Less Traveled,” Josh and Charlotte established first ascents of routes and boulders across six continents.

From bolting routes at 14,000 feet in Peru to climbing Tasmanian coastal spires, they scoured the globe for untouched rock, including in previously undeveloped areas in Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, Greece, Serbia, and Japan. One of their most notable objectives culminated in a 600-meter, 17-pitch 5.13a big-wall first ascent in Tsaranoro, Madagascar, called Soava

JON GLASSBERG/LOUDER THAN 11

“HONEY BEES HAD BEGUN STINGING, SCRATCHING, AND CLAWING AROUND HIS EYES, EARS, MOUTH AND NOSE.” Dia—they sent all the pitches in a oneday push, except for pitch 13.

Of course, their round-the-world trip had its exciting-cum-dangerous moments, too.

One day, a few hundred miles from the nearest town of San Ignacio, buried deep within the lush, green jungles of Belize, Josh rappelled a granite cliff high above a river, unaware of the peril awaiting him below.

“All of a sudden, I couldn’t see or hear anything,” he says—thousands of black-and-yellow Africanized killer honey bees had begun stinging, scratching, and clawing around his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. The bees were trying to suffocate him. “This is where I am going to die,” he thought to himself.

Knots in the rope blocked his rappel device, so Josh hand-over-handed 40 feet back up the rope to the top of the cliff where he was forced to jump—without spotting his landing.

He miraculously plunged into deep water, unscathed, but the swarm was undeterred. His body staving off anaphylactic shock, Josh plummeted through 20-foot waterfalls, the half-inch death machines following him downriver. “Each time I came up for a gulp of air, they were there waiting for me, ready to rapid fire my skull and face. I could even feel them underwater in my hair leaving their stingers in my dome.” After about a mile, the bees dispersed.

At another stop on the World Less Traveled tour, where he and Charlotte were climbing off the grid in Madagascar, he took a four-hour detour from the climbing area through the wilderness to find a restaurant

Larson working out the upper moves on one of Fontainbleau’s most notorious blocs: The Island, The Big Island...or Soudain Seul, depending on how you start it.

with wifi for a previously scheduled call with Marc Norman, the president of USA Climbing.

Norman was looking to hire a head coach for Team USA ahead of the 2020 Olympics. He offered Josh the job.

“I had to say yes,” says Josh. “I felt like if I didn’t take the job, I would have been passing up the chance of a lifetime.”

Cutting his global climbing circuit short by four months, Josh made the leap to Salt Lake City to help run the novel USAC High Performance program, to be based in a hypothetical training center under the theory that America’s top competitors would all thrive under a single roof, leading to success at international competitions, and, hopefully, medals at the Olympics.

Back in Salt Lake City on the morning of the mock comp—a simulation of the Olympics combined format—Bouldering National Champion Natalia Grossman confidently approaches the center of the local Millcreek Momentum’s overhanging headwall. The gym is hushed, with all eyes fixed on her as she glides seamlessly up the wall.

John Muse, High Performance Director, observes the round with members of the International Olympic Committee. Earlier in the week he told me that his detailoriented mentality and Josh’s free-flowing approach has created some challenges.

“There is quite a bit of difference between us. He’s challenged me to think outside my box, to not just live in this square box that I like to live in where everything’s got to fit in this little parcel,” says Muse about his need to have logistics and scheduling sorted out months in advance. “But Josh’s soft touch, his flexibility and willingness to grow and evolve with this new program, has been invaluable.”

After Natalia comes close to topping the route, Kyra Condie, an Olympic qualifier, takes her turn and doesn’t have the try she is looking for. Tears well up in Kyra’s eyes.

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“Can I skip speed this afternoon?” she asks Josh. “My skin is wrecked.”

Josh reduces his voice close to a whisper as he attempts to assuage Kyra’s doubts—something the athletes will have to deal with moving from one discipline to the next in a single day of competition. Instead of focusing on rebuilding her skin, he works on bolstering her mindset.

“I never want to say too much, where it becomes just noise, and I don’t want to say something where I’m not helping. I need to say the right amount at the right time,” explains Josh, referring to a lesson he learned from one of his Slovenian coaching mentors, Roman Krajnik. “Some coaches say too much, and some say too little. Roman says just enough.”

Kyra, who kept climbing for the rest of the day, let me know that Josh’s ability to listen and make comments with intuitive tact also applies to how he coaches movement. “I’ll be working on a problem for hours, and Josh will come over, help point out a few things, and then I’ll do the climb next try.”

After a few rounds of speed, the athletes prepared for their final event that night: bouldering.

The setting sun casts a pink glow on the Wasatch Mountains to the east as we make our way back to the training center for the bouldering round. Josh pushes the gas pedal down with his plastic boot, cranks the e-brake, and drifts around a corner strewn with the flapping tarps and tents of a homeless encampment.

Once inside the training center, we sit down on some

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JON GLASSBERG / LOUDER THAN 11

Larson on the aesthetic La Vie en Rose (V4), in the Brione River area of Switzerland.

dusty volumes tucked away behind the climbing walls while his black-spotted dog, Lulu, takes another lap around the pads out front.

“When we started climbing, did you ever imagine we’d have all this? The sky’s the limit now,” says Josh, pushing his catcher’s-mitt-sized hand against his stubbled chin, crinkling the skin up and down his face as he considers the future.

“The athletes are here because of what they have done, not because of what I have done,” he says. “But there are pieces missing and if they want to go up against the elite in the world, they have to put these pieces together.”

One of those pieces, the mental game, is at the forefront of Josh’s mind.

“Everybody has the plan for feeling good, but nobody has the plan for when things start going wrong,” he says. “It’s in these moments of failure that you’ve got to be able to focus on just controlling what’s right in front of you, not what’s way out here,” he says, stretching both of his hands far away from his head. “And if you don’t have the mental fortitude when things start to go south, you’re not ready. And you don’t know what to do. That’s when even the best athlete can tumble. That’s what I want to prepare them for.”

Ultimately though, Josh also has dreams of his own.

Later that night while sitting on the couch, we devour a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food while playing GoldenEye on his new Nintendo 64. As usual, we start scheming about the future. Josh lays out his retirement plan: to buy land in the Andes of Peru, run a farm and a climbers’ hostel equipped with a beer and pizza bar, and spend the rest of his days chasing down king lines at 14,000 feet.

“That’s the plan at least,” he says. With his luck, he might just end up on the moon.

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JAN VIRT 9BOTH PAGES)

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Our International Podium Picks LET’S MAKE SOME BETS, SHALL WE? THE EDITORS AT GYM CLIMBER FEEL THESE 10 ARE GOING TO REPRESENT IN TOKYO. OUR LIST IS ONLY FOR INTERNATIONAL COMPETITORS, LEST YOU THINK WE HAVE LEFT OUT TEAM USA.

Janja Garnbret (SLO), 22 At 22, Janja Garnbret is the most decorated competition climber ever. “I’m not someone who is trying to break records. I just want to enjoy every competition….And this is the most important thing to me,” Garnbret said in an interview with May Pang in Gym Climber. That may be, but she has broken a lot of records and pulled a lot of firsts.

After six years of competing on an open level, Garnbret has racked up 35 gold medals, four more than Jain Kim, of South Korea, who took 16 years to do so. In 2019, Garnbret became the first athlete, male or female, to win every Bouldering event in an entire season.

Later that year, she became the first woman to win both the Lead and Bouldering World Championship titles in the same year—something only Adam Ondra had done.

Then she won the Combined, putting her among the first crop of athletes to earn a spot in Tokyo 2020.

Despite her modesty Garnbret is a favorite to win at the Olympics.

—Delaney Miller

Janja Garnbret won the season-opening Bouldering World Cup in 2021, in Meiringen, Switzerland. Amazingly, she has remained undefeated in bouldering since 2018.

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Jessica Pilz (AUS), 24

LEFT: Jessica Pilz. ABOVE: Akiyo Noguchi, both earning their Olympic berths at the Combined World Championships, in Hachioji, Japan.

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Akiyo Noguchi (JPN), 31 Following the 2019 Vail World Cup, Akiyo Noguchi told Gym Climber, “I would like to become the first gold medalist for Sport Climbing at the Olympics.” At that point in her career, Noguchi had already racked up 21 gold medals from World Cups. At 31 years old, she’s the oldest female competitor to qualify for the Olympics, and after competing in over 200 international events, she’s proven herself one of the most consistent Bouldering athletes on the circuit.

Noguchi is a perfectionist.

Her motto is, “Do my best completely.” While lead and speed have never been her disciplines of choice, she’s made great improvements in both over the last several years. In 2018, she finished eighth in the lead season. In 2019 she was fifth.

In the Combined qualification round in the Hachioji World Championships, where she earned her Olympic berth, she was 10th in Speed. In front of her home crowd on the big stage, Noguchi may well achieve her career-capping goal.

—DM

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC (BOTH)

Jessica Pilz received her Olympic invitation after placing 10th at the Hachioji Combined World Championships. Although lead is her specialty—she won the 2018 Lead World Championships in front of her home crowd in Innsbruck—Pilz has been steadily improving her ranking in the women’s bouldering field over recent years. Since the now 24-year-old began competing on the open circuit in 2011, she’s made finals in five Bouldering World Cups, to add to her 35 appearances in Lead World Cup finals.

Pilz didn’t grow up with climbing parents. She began climbing at age 10, and her attitude towards the sport has held steady over the years: to just have fun. In terms of the distant future, Pilz is reserved. “I don’t have specific long-term goals, because you never know what happens,” she said in an interview with Gym Climber. “I want to compete on top level as long as I can and as long as I enjoy it. In the further future I could also imagine to focus on rock a bit more.” —DM

Miho Nonaka (JPN), 23

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC (UPPER RIGHT), DANIEL GAJDA

Miho Nonaka has been on the adult World Cup circuit for years, but it wasn’t until 2018 that she emerged as one of the best all-arounders in the field—then she injured her shoulder … and then she injured her other shoulder. The requisite rehabilitation for those injuries kept her out of competition for several months, but there was no greater way for Nonaka to celebrate her return to the competition scene than by qualifying for the Olympics at the 2019 World Championships.

Though she is just as proficient at bouldering and lead climbing as her teammate Akiyo Noguchi, Nonaka is arguably a better speed climber.

Nonaka has transcended the niche world of climbing in her native Japan. She has appeared in fashion magazines, and she is sponsored by Tag Heuer and Beats by Dre. The Olympics being in her home country will only increase her national profile and fame … especially if she wins a medal.

—John Burgman

Miho Nonaka (lower left) and Shauna Coxsey, (upper right), at the Hachioji Combined World Championships.

Shauna Coxsey (GBR), 28 In 2011, as a relative newcomer to the comp scene, Shauna Coxsey made a Bouldering World Cup final, in Munich. The next year she could not stop making finals—five times in a row. In 2013 she edged ever closer to a win, finishing fourth in Vail 2013, where she flashed the first three finals problems. The next year it happened: She won one, in Grindelwald, Switzerland—and then another, the next weekend, in Innsbruck, Austria. She won four in a row from the end of 2015 into 2016, and won the Overall Bouldering World Cup season two years running. On the World Cup circuit, she didn’t miss a finals field for 14 events in a row, from May 2016 to June 2018. If you had picked anyone for the Olympics, then it would have been Shauna.

In December 2017, bouldering in Fontainebleau, she sustained an 80- or 90-percent tear of her A2 pulley. She was out of climbing for 14 weeks, got back in, reinjured it in June, and had no podiums that season. Would she have enough time to recover and attain the spectrum of required skills to make the Olympics? While she had done her share of lead climbing as a junior competitor, speed was new to her.

Well, she was back on the podium first thing the next year, and at the World Championships in August 2020 she was among the first batch of athletes to qualify for the Olympics.

—Alison Osius

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Adam Ondra is one of the best-known climbers on the planet (thanks in part to his Road to Tokyo YouTube series), and many consider him to be the best climber ever. He qualified for the Olympics at the event in Toulouse, during which he struggled in Speed but placed third in Bouldering and won Lead. Although he has been working extensively on improving his Speed game, we should expect a similar strategic approach from Ondra in the Olympics: Try to finish middle-of-the-pack in Speed, and then dominate in Bouldering and Lead.

Ondra is a many-year leader on rock as well. He put up the world’s first 5.15c. Later, the world’s first 5.15d, which remains without a repeat. He sent the Dawn Wall (VI 5.14d) on his first trip to Yosemite Valley, in 2016. He’s onsighted 5.14d, Il Domani, in Baltzola, Spain. He flashed Super Crackinette (5.15a/9a+), in St. Léger, France. The list goes on.

Like Germany’s Jan Hojer, Ondra is a taller climber (6 feet, 1 inch) and extremely flexible for his size. On hard outdoor routes, Ondra is known for being extremely vocal in the crux sections—heck, there are entire “Adam Ondra Screaming” compilations on YouTube. Though he is not typically as loud while climbing in competitions, there is still a chance that Ondra will offer his unique vocal stylings at the Olympics.

—JB

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EUAN RYAN

Adam Ondra (CZE)

Adam Ondra, 28, started 2021 off well, with a win in the Meiringen Bouldering World Cup.

Jakob Schubert (AUS) As a two-time gold medalist at the Lead World Championships (in 2012 and 2018), the 2018 Combined World Champion, and a seven-time Lead World Cup season winner, Jakob Schubert is one of the most decorated climbers on the Olympic roster.

He has also won three Bouldering World Cup events, bringing his total World Cup wins to 21.

Schubert dabbles in other sports, including soccer and tennis. He has mentioned that he wants to pursue more big-wall climbing as well (outdoor routes typically 1,000 feet or taller), possibly when his competition career wraps up.

—JB

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC

Jakob Schubert, 31, is one of the oldest and most experienced climbers to qualify for the Olympics.

He’s also one of the most accomplished, with three World Champion titles.

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Many viewers of the 2019 Combined World Championships, in Hachioji, were surprised and impressed by the all-around skills of so-called Speed specialist Rishat Khaibullin of Kazakhstan.

Critics of the combined format have suggested that Speed climbers will have difficulty in Bouldering and Lead (and vice versa), but Khaibullin supplemented his first place title in speed at Hachioji with fifth place in Lead and eighth in Bouldering. His performance landed him in third place overall and earned him one of the first few spots in the 2020 Olympics.

Though a speed demon, the 25-year-old likes bouldering best, because of the mental challenge involved. He began climbing at age 6 with his father, a mountain climber, and says he didn’t like climbing from the outset—he lost his first competition and decided climbing wasn’t for him.

He only tried competing again when his mother persuaded him. Now it’s all fun, whether he’s speed climbing, bouldering, or lead climbing: “I just like to compete,” he says. And he can certainly hold his own across the board. He is a recreational skier and snowboarder as well as climber.

—Leyla Britan

Kai Harada (JPN), 22

ABOVE: A climber since age 10, Kai Harada was the 2018 Bouldering World Champion.

Kai Harada proved himself an entertainer at the 2019 Combined World Championships in Hachioji, with dramatic drop-knees, powerful dynos, and risky bat-hangs.

His confrontation with the boulders was an exciting show, and although he was disappointed on some trickier moves—and visibly expressed his frustration to the crowd—his performance was good enough to land him in fourth place overall, with third in both Lead and Speed, and sixth place in Bouldering. The 22-year-old is one of many talented climbers on Team Japan, but his explosive power and acrobatic style make him a memorable one to watch. He’s also expressive: he winces and fist pumps in reaction to what happens on the wall, adding a bit of showmanship.

—LB

RIGHT: Rishat Khaibullin was the first athlete from the Commonwealth of Independent States, an organization of post-Soviet republics, to receive an Olympic invitation.

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Rishat Khaibullin (KAZ), 25

Tomoa Narasaki, 24, is best known for his bouldering talent. But given his recent speed runs, and his ability to perform in lead, he’s a clear favorite for a medal.

Tomoa Narasaki (JPN), 24 Tomoa Narasaki was the winner of the Combined and Bouldering World Championships in Hachioji. He won the 2019 Bouldering World Cup circuit, has placed as high as second in Lead World Cups, and recently clocked a 5.72 speed run—a mere .24 seconds off the world record. His competition resume positions him as a clear favorite to earn a medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Narasaki is one of the most exciting competitors to watch because of his relentless, all-out approach to every move. Perhaps one YouTube commenter said it best: “Tomoa has such a nice flow to his climbing. Usually when no one does a boulder, I bet on him. He just does things differently.”

—JB

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THE WALLS, THE FORMAT, AND HOW TO READ THE SCOREBOARD THE WALLS The Aomi Urban Sports Park, with a view of Tokyo Bay, will host Sport Climbing for the Olympic Games. The lead wall is 12 meters wide by 15 meters tall, with a central prow designed to resemble the Olympic flame. The bouldering wall is 15 meters wide by 4.5 tall, and the speed wall is 6 by 15.5 meters. The climbing wall was built by EntrePrises.

Todd Chester of EntrePrises says the walls were designed to tie in together and create “an aesthetic field of play.”

“We used all of our offices. Designers from France, U.S., China and the U.K. submitted ideas and worked together, and the wall became a collaborative effort,” Chester told Gym Climber last year. Another effort was to keep the design simple, he says, for the routesetters to use as a blank canvas. “The creative part is being as simple as possible, and sometimes that’s the hardest part,” Chester said.

READING THE BOULDERING SCOREBOARD Each vertical stack of boxes represents a problem, with the first stack being boulder-problem number one, the second being boulder-problem number two, and so on. If the bottom half of a stack is shaded, the athlete was able to reach the zone on that particular boulder. If the top half is also shaded, that indicates the athlete topped the boulder. If neither box is shaded, the athlete was unable to make scorable progress on the boulder. Just right of the boxes you’ll see totals: the total number of tops the athlete achieved in that round (“Top”), followed by the total number of zones (“Zone”), followed by the total attempts taken to achieve all tops (“Top Attempts”). Scoring is calculated in this order. The athlete who tops the most boulders wins. If there’s a tie, the athlete who topped the most boulders and achieved the most zones wins. If there’s still a tie, then the winning score goes to the athlete with the least number of attempts taken to reach the top of all the boulders topped.

The final tiebreaker is the total number of attempts taken to reach all achieved zones.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Designed by EntrePrises, the walls will reside in the Aomi Urban Sports Park, in Tokyo. Already, the walls are being put to use and tested. The scoring system for bouldering has undergone a few iterations over the past few years. We think the current one is the most intuitive.

CLIVE ROSE/GETTY IMAGES (BOTH)

THE COMBINED FORMAT Speed. Bouldering. Lead. Athletes will need to be proficient in all three to win. Think of the combined format as the triathlon of climbing. Or of asking a marathon runner to also do a 100-meter dash and the 800-meter hurdles. Scoring is based on a multiplication of ranking from each discipline, so the top-ranking athletes from each discipline will be the most likely to win. For example, if an athlete wins Speed (which is the first event), gets sixth in Bouldering (event number two), then their combined score will be 1*6=6, prior to Lead (the finale). That athlete would be three points ahead of one who placed third in both Speed and Bouldering (3*3=9).

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COLIN DUFFY The (Olympic) Wild Card

By Delaney Miller

There’s no getting around it. The vibe in the gym was weird, given what a seminal moment it was.

Colin Duff y, 16, lowered slowly into the crowd. He had just topped the men’s final lead route, putting him in first place by six points, not an insignificant margin, and securing his ticket to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It was the sole remaining spot on the men’s US Team. There would be an award ceremony and interviews and photoshoots to come.

The Washington Post would call him up. He’d go on Channel 9News. People online would profile him. Sponsorship contracts would be reworked. The high schooler would endure a school assembly in his honor.

But in the meantime, Colin sat below the lead wall and un-velcroed his shoes. He hugged his coach, he talked to his teammates. He stood with his shoulders slightly hunched.

While Colin went through a series of mechanical, quotidian motions, nothing on his face showed any indication of registration. It was an emblemless, frisson-less moment, in which his life changed forever, and absolutely nothing seemed to change at all. Some liminal spaces are just too big to immediately occupy.

Perhaps, if he had at least cracked a smile, the onlooking crowd might have been able to breathe some sort of sigh of relief and joy. Or perhaps if it all didn’t come at such a stark contrast from the night before, when Canada’s Alannah Yip secured her own ticket to the Games. The 28-year-old had clawed her way through 21 World Cups and Championships in 2019 alone to get to where she was. While lowering from the final lead route, Yip was breathless—all shakes and sobs while trying to untie her knot, kiss her boyfriend and hug her coaches. Her victory had been clinched by the tiniest of margins, a consummate fight, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the whole damn gym.

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Colin Duffy, at 16 years old, qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Games.

JON GLASSBERG/JESS TALLEY/LOUDER THAN 11

At 16 years old, with no experience in the adult circuit, Colin Duff y claimed the sole remaining spot on the U.S. Olympic Team. To many, his debut was a surprise. But Colin was no dark horse.

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“We don’t view comps the same way as other parents,” Nancy Duffy, Colin’s mother, would say later. A different outlook on the whole thing, nurtured from the beginning, rendering Colin unwilling or unable to see what a very big deal the whole thing was? Perhaps that was it.

“We’re boring,” or “We’re just a regular family.” Those phrases came up over and over again from both Nancy and, Colin’s dad, Eric Duffy, underplaying, underscoring the whole thing.

Shock? An insouciant attitude towards comps? Humility?

Maybe that last is what it was. Because any of the men in finals that day could have done it—you don’t get an Olympian without runners-up—and Colin was friends with all of the athletes he had just bested.

Whatever the reason for the lack of punctuation upon his qualification is beside the point. Because it happened, and he earned it. Colin Duffy had just become the youngest athlete to qualify for Sport Climbing in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. So the more interesting question was how. Which brings us to, who the hell is this young talent?

Colin started climbing at age 3 at a local rec center in Boulder, Colorado. When he was 5, he upgraded to a Lifetime Fitness wall. By 8, his parents signed him up for a class at ROCK’n & JAM’n, and he was lead climbing a few months later. Next up: a summer camp at ABC Kids Climbing, arguably the most famous gym in the U.S., where none other than Brooke Raboutou, today alos one of the other three Olympic-qualified athletes, trained as well under the direction of, if not equally-famous competition climber, Robyn Erbesfield Raboutou. Folks, it really doesn’t get better than that. And somewhere deep down, I have to imagine, young Colin knew.

“He wanted ABC. Even though he went to Boulder Rock Club and tried somewhere else, he always wanted to go to ABC,” remarked Nancy. Evidently, the 8-year-old felt his

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Colin, at the 2020 Pan-American Championships, where he earned his Olympic berth.

From left to right: Zach Galla, Colin, and Zander Waller.

calling.

And Erbesfield Raboutou, of course, being a four-time World Cup Champion, and, nowadays, the “Queen Bee” at ABC, knew as well.

“I first heard about Colin, over the summer when I was actually in Europe, with the junior team,” she said. “He had signed up for a summer camp through ABC. And the instructor, Adam Brink, sent me a text, saying ‘I just experienced seeing one of the strongest climbers I’ve ever seen.’ … And Adam doesn’t say those kinds of things very often.”

Erbesfield Raboutou described Colin’s natural “frogginess,” as she put it. His ability to know and to execute.

He’s had that since day one, she noted.

Funny, if you didn’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t realize just how good Colin is. He can be quiet, unassuming, at times. He just makes it look so easy. And when he’s around his friends on Team ABC, make that, when he’s around the friends that also happen to be like-minded 16- or 17-year-old boys, he’ll crack a smile and roll his eyes at words like “poop” (after one boy wrote it on a board in lights using the ‘set’ feature). He’ll goof off. He’ll play.

And maybe that’s the thing about Colin. The fact that he plays. In fact, he can’t get enough of climbing. He’ll clean a gym out—sending every last boulder and route—and then make up his own. He’ll send something one way and then send it again another. He

DANIEL GAJDA/IFSC (BOTH PAGES)

None of that seemed to happen when Colin realized he’d won. Don’t get me wrong—there were the hugs and the applause. But overall the crowd held its breath, eyes whisking in their sockets from one person to the next, waiting for whatever it was that was supposed to happen but wouldn’t. A moment inwrought with meaning, or was it?

Perhaps it was shock. That’s what Colin would say in an interview with IFSC, and then directly to me less than an hour later. Sure, shock. There was that in the crowd, too. Shock that the kid with the least adult competition experience—in fact, make that zero adult experience in the international circuit—the one who had been tailing his American teammates all weekend and had, as it turned out, been glued to the toilet, arms around the bowl and sweat leaking out of his pores while an unfortunate and ill-timed case of the flu ravaged his body, was the one standing at the top of the podium shaking the IFSC President Marco Scolaris’s hand. The unreality of it all was pronounced. Colin still had a growth spurt or two left in him.

“HE’S A FIGHTER ... I’VE SEEN HIM READJUST ON A HOLD MORE TIMES THAN I THOUGHT WERE POSSIBLE.”

falls. He tries again. He falls. He tries again. He falls ... Colin Duffy does not leave a boulder unfinished.

“He’s a fighter, you know, I mean, like, I’ve seen him readjust on a hold more times than I thought were possible, and just biting and digging into it to get something out of it,” said Ryan Arment, the head coach and head setter of ABC. Arment has been working with Colin since day one.

Nowadays, he’s the architect of Colin’s training program.

“He’s extremely coachable,” said Arment. “I think one of the most coachable kids I’ve worked with. He wants to be the best he can be. And he recognizes that his coaches can help him achieve that.”

What do you get when talent meets hard work? Results.

Since Colin entered the international stage, he’s won the Youth Lead World Championships. Twice. And let’s not forget his 10 Youth National titles: six in Lead, three in Bouldering, and one in Speed.

Colin has always been a high achiever. He tested into Stargate Charter School in Thornton, Colorado, a public

Colin placed fifth in Speed at the Pan-American Championships.

He was second in Bouldering and first in Lead.

school for the gifted and talented.

Google it. According to one site, the school is ranked number two in the state. With fewer than 1,400 students total in grades K-12, classes are intimate and competitive.

“It’s a super competitive environment with the smartest people that I know...

It’s just a good challenge,” said Colin.

Letters, sounds, words, and competition.

It all started at age 5.

Colin likes math and science.

He sees himself being some sort of engineer when he’s older. After finishing up at Stargate in spring 2022, he wants to go to college, somewhere local, like Colorado University. Taking a gap year is detrimental for some students, he said, so he won’t be deferring.

His home life might surprise you; it’s typical for a teenage boy (or at least a teenage boy who does sports). With classes currently being online, he’ll wake up 15 minutes before his first lecture. Go through the motions, get through the day, zone out on phone (or nap) before leaving for practice. Come home, do homework and chat with friends. Repeat.

“We are not like many parents, we do not force him to do things,” said Nancy. “And we have a very laid-back approach. People often ask us, what do we do? They think we’re gonna have this whole regime, with food and training and all these things. We don’t have that. I think that’s maybe the secret sauce—that his parents aren’t climbers. We have no agenda. Colin has the agenda.”

Colin’s agenda, as it is with Tokyo 2020 kicking off in fewer than 100 days, consists of four to five days

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Colin practices the craft, at ABC Kids Climbing, Boulder, Colorado.

Standing on the grey mats at ABC last March, Colin shuffled away from his friends to a boulder in the corner of the gym, the sole remaining one for him to work on. He took a deep breath, he chalked up, he pulled on. Bad feet, slippery, dual-text crimps in a dihedral: not exactly his strong suit.

He peeled off after a few moves. Undeterred, he quickly tried again, this time with alternative beta, leading with the other hand and going for a match. Close, but no cigar. A fire was building. Colin tried again and fell in the same spot for the third time—WHACK. He slapped the wall with both hands, and then he leaned against the freshly imprinted surface, an undercurrent of passion turning to rage overtaking him.

One minute, laughing at “poop,” the next, boiling. Where the hell did that come from? This was no longer climbing; it was pugilistic, and, of course, not uncommon in climbers.

“He’s very, very deeply passionate, unlike maybe anyone that I’ve ever seen,” said Erbesfield-Raboutou.

Passion. Oh yes, it’s there. At times, seemingly allconsuming. Because you don’t get passion without intensity.

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JESS TALLEY/LOUDER THAN 11

a week in the gym, three hours per session. He’s a lead climber at heart, but power and competition-style boulders are his daily bread and butter. Sprinkle in weight training and speed climbing as well. Having access to so many gyms on the Front Range, Colin likes to mix up his venue as often as possible on the weekends. The weekdays, of course, are for practice at ABC with his teammates. He’s looking forward to getting outside more after Tokyo.

While his workload and training schedule are heavy, Colin handles things well. And his parents do what they can to help. His mom taught him positive affirmations (although she wouldn’t specify what they were). They help manage media requests. If Colin needs a belayer on the weekends, Eric is available. At Pan-Ams, they had a family trip to Disneyland planned for after the competition.

“We didn’t care if he won,” said Nancy. The extra trip was a must, for balance, she stressed.

Variety, plus structure. Sport, plus magic. Olympian, plus, routine family life. Balance is often a fine line between two extremes. And in his attitude toward both training and competing, Colin walks the line.

Colin has been known to do worse than slapping the wall.

He’ll let curse words fly, along with his chalk bag. Robyn and Ryan have both tried their hands at tempering his recalcitrant behavior, but with a light touch.

“I have to say that I don’t love it. But I do love it, because it’s what makes him who he is,” said Erbesfield Raboutou.

“As coaches, we really have to ride that fine line between never wanting to take away from that fire that he has, that makes him awesome. But at the same time, we don’t want him to get kicked out of the competition.”

An idiopathic trait; simultaneously fueling and burning him. Physical age and experience matter a whole lot less when you possess that kind of intensity.

“I don’t … I don’t give up easily on a boulder,” said Colin the next day. “And even if something seems out of reach at first, I will just push myself past the point of enjoyment. To do it... I don’t really know.” He struggled to put it into words.

That night at practice, he was off balance. But I thought back to when he had navigated through the buzzsaw of his emotions perfectly: at Pan-Ams. On the outside, his face had been blank as a basketball. “I was so focused in that moment that I don’t really remember much,” said Colin.

Arment added his own observation: “He does go into a different place. He kind of becomes a slightly different person when he’s at an intense competition. It’s violent, it’s

intense. I got the chills just thinking about it...”

For better and worse, Colin wrestles with something deep inside himself.

“He’s always been a kid who wants to please coaches and wants to be friends with his teammates, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t struggle,” said Erbesfield Raboutou. “I would say 100 percent of the times that he gets pissed or angry when he’s climbing, he throws a little bit of a hissy fit. And he’s done it since he was little. He does it less now that he’s older, but he still does it. And some of his teammates don’t think that’s cool. They’re like, really? Why does he get so mad, you know? But it’s the fire that he has, and it’s why he’s going to the Olympics, and they’re not.”

Back to that moment when Colin qualified. Maybe the problem wasn’t Colin at all, but the crowd’s expectations. Because for us, having

DANIEL GAJDA/IFSC

been standing around all weekend, carrying all this anticipation of the biggest, most often told story-arc in sports, where an athlete is expected to fight, to win, to achieve everything they ever wanted and by extension everything we ever wanted … We were asking too much of a competitor that both deserved the spot and had yet to dream. We expected a clear-cut climax, the tears and, at a minimum, some fist bumps. At best, we got a smile.

But we didn’t know to look inside; to see the sobs of pure relief that were building, the ones that wouldn’t be released until later that night when Colin stepped off that tightrope and back into himself, in the quiet, safe solitude of the hotel-bound car with his parents.

Fast forward a year and some change later. I sat across from Colin, a cup of coffee and a baconand-egg bagel in between in a small

Colin and Robyn Erbesfield-Raboutou take in his Olympic-qualifying victory at the 2020 Pan-American Championships.

booth in a Panera, in Boulder, Colorado. As I dug into the why questions, the ones that go beyond sport, he looked dumbfounded. What makes you so confident? Why do you have to try hard? Why are you so hard on yourself? Where do you go?! Like asking a fish what water is.

Still, as he answered the best he could, he spoke softly, thoughtfully. He’d grown—2 inches by his own estimate.

The kid sitting across from me had filled out. The youngest competitor to qualify for the Olympics, and the one who had certainly benefited the most from the year-long delay. Here was a future Olympian that no one saw coming, and whose future is wide open.

TWO DAYS WITH TEAM USA SALT LAKE CITY IS QUICKLY BECOMING A HUB OF U.S. COMPETITION CLIMBING. WE DECIDED TO GO SEE WHAT THE FUSS WAS ABOUT. Text by Francis Sanzaro and Delaney Miller Photos by Jess Talley/Louder Than 11

In late February, while the mountains around Salt Lake City were still covered in snow, Gym Climber paid a visit. It was time to get some questions answered. What was the vibe in the new High Performance training facility? How was Josh Larson, Team USA head coach, getting along?

What kind of hangboards were they using? What kind of insider information could we glean and sell to the Russians? ... You know, the important stuff.

What we found were dedicated staff, a core facility and a community of climbers training hard, day in and day out, encouraging each other. The series of articles in this special section illustrate are behind-the-scenes portraits of the people and things forming a crucial component of the future of U.S. competitive climbing, which includes, in case you didn’t know, four qualified OIympians.

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CREDIT

Josh Larson: Team USA Head Coach in Action

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The Training Facility

Pg. 72

A Typical Day

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Meg Coyne

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Zack DiCristino

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2024 Olympic Hopefuls

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JOSH LARSON Team USA Head Coach in Action

By Francis Sanzaro

It is said a good sculptor looks five times and strikes once.

Mistakes are costly in stone. Mistakes are also costly when you are coaching first-time Olympians.

It seems no person knows that better than Team USA head coach Josh Larson. Most might think an Olympic head coach would be a gray-haired, whistle-toting, clipboardafficionado who paces in front of athletes like someone who is trying hard to impart something the athletes don’t know.

Who yells semi-frequently. Who says with no mincing of words what athletes are doing wrong. You know, the coach in the movies. Larson doesn’t do that. And it’s working.

Larson is directly responsible for training qualified

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Josh Larson, USA Climbing Team head coach, and Lulu, team dog.

Olympians, Nathaniel Coleman and Kyra Condie, both of whom live in Salt Lake. Brooke Raboutou and Colin Duffy, the two other qualified Olympians, train under Ryan Arment and Chris Danielson, among others, at ABC Kids Climbing in Boulder, Colorado.

When I asked Nathaniel Coleman about Larson, Coleman didn’t miss a beat: “Josh is a hard worker. He is committed to being our coach. He puts in a lot of hours, just hanging out being there for us, while we are training. And then he puts in more hours when we are at home resting to set new boulders. Josh and Zack have been a great duo in coming up with my training plan. It’s been nice to let them handle it. I trust that they know how to train me, how to make me stronger.

And that gives me the ability to come to every session confident that what I am doing is right, which is something that is harder to do if you are making your own training plan.”

I spent two days watching Larson coach not just qualified Olympians, but potential 2024 competitors and individual team members: Ben Hanna, Quinn Mason, Natalia Grossman, Cloe Coscoy, Thea Wulff, Maya Madere.

HE WAS ALSO SHOWING THEM THAT THE TRAINING WAS WORKING.

Others came and went as well.

Like all successful coaches, Larson is effective on a lot of levels, all for different reasons. Larson coaches with nudges, hints, pats on the back, suggestions, a keen eye, good timing and, being an excellent climber himself, first-hand knowledge of the sport. Coaching or at dinner, he chooses his words carefully. His presence is neither heavy nor light.

He sits down next to athletes. He looks them in the eyes. He makes them laugh. They return the gesture. He has their respect. Larson is serious, but quick to laugh.

Larson looks tired, but who wouldn’t be. The difficulty of creating a tight-knit community of climbers who train, cheer and compete against each other is no easy task. That he is starting, along with assistant coach Meg Coyne and Zack DiCristino, and Team USA and USAC staff, an Olympic program from scratch should not be forgotten either.

For the time being, Larson is living and breathing his job.

He lives down the street with his wife, Charlotte Durif, also a former competitor and crusher, in a cozy neighborhood.

His home is cozy and spacious, a large countertop anchoring the kitchen. Larson is at the TC six days a week.

One morning, Larson had the athletes do some benchmark strength testing: one-arm pull-ups, one-arm deadhangs, squats, bench, etc. The two athletes he was testing—Condie and Coleman—were at the beginning of a training cycle, and the benchmarks would show progress. Coleman cranked out 7.5 one-arms, for instance, to his fellow teammates cheering him on. Condie did one-arm deadhangs on what I think was an 8 or 10 mil edge. I never had such an intense feeling of finger-strength envy.

MacBook in hand, Larson sat down on the mats and pointed out their progress. The point of clueing them into

Session number two!

Larson explains the training plan for the evening.

the process was subtle—he wanted the athletes to be invested in their training, to see the progress like he did. He was also showing them that the training was working. The latter purpose shouldn’t be overlooked, as Coleman and Condie are relatively new to Larson.

According to Larson, their program was part of what seemed to be a semistandardized USOPC training protocol he and DiCristino were implementing into the climbing program, i.e., workouts and benchmarks shared across all U.S. Olympians. The interface between the USOPC and USA Climbing is just starting to gather complexity. The climbing Olympic program is in its infancy, and if Larson, like many of the USAC staff, is experiencing what we can call growing pains, he is handling them with class.

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THE TRAINING FACILITY Behind the scenes at the highperformance facility

By Francis Sanzaro Everyone calls it the TC, the official “High Performance” training facility for Team USA athletes in Salt Lake City.

Imagine a core climbing gym on steroids, except take away the juice bar and insert a small fridge. In place of a vending machine, add in a few boxes of Clif Bars. Remove the yoga room and in its place add an entire wing devoted to compstyle boulders. Add in a giant graffiti mural, and layer in the vibe of a climbing salon, à la the Paris art salons of the 19th century, where those who are who stop by for a visit as they pass through town.

While not all Team USA athletes live and train in Salt Lake City, it is quickly becoming the hub for current and aspiring American elite competition climbers. The TC even has its own Instagram account: @usa_tc. For good reason. The facility is core, the community is real, and there’s good coffee nearby.

In an interview with KRCC radio, assistant coach Meg Coyne noted, “The space is a little dingy,” which isn’t inacurate, though that’s what gives the place its charm.

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The spray wall, in all its glory, where the athletes typically warm up after arriving.

The main entrance to the TC is far removed from the street, the latter a stone’s throw from Highway 15, the main highway slicing Salt Lake City north to south. A single door with a sign that says “TC” on top gains access, and you could easily mistake it for a carpenter’s workshop.

Salt Lake is an excellent place to live, train and climb. There are plenty of boulders in the surrounding desert and up the granite canyons. Some of the earliest top-end sport routes can be found on the limestone near Salt Lake. Already, the new comp crews are adding their mark to the area. Nathaniel Coleman FA’d Grand Illusion, which, at V16, is now one of the hardest in the American West. Not long after, Sean Bailey, a friend, fellow competitor and training partner of Coleman’s, nabbed the coveted second ascent.

The TC can be divided into two sections. The front section, where you enter, has the weight racks, hangboards, spray wall, PT corner and long table. The walls are from EntrePrises. The “far” half is the land of comp boulders: a “U-shaped” area which feels vacuous and decadent, in the sense that the area is four

THE STORAGE ROOM FOR THE HOLDS AND VOLUMES IS MASSIVE ENOUGH TO STORE TWO CESSNA AIRPLANES. times the size of the gym in my hometown, but only contains a dozen or so problems. And the problems are hard. But that’s the point—to mimic the competition environment with stately, cerebral World Cup problems.

The storage room for the holds and volumes is also massive enough to store two Cessna airplanes; there, volumes larger than refrigerators lie about like monstrous shapes. Sets upon sets of holds—Bluepill, Blocz, Cheeta, eGrips, eXpression, Flathold, Kilter, Level, Pusher, Rockcity, Squadra, Teknik—are stacked on giant metal shelving. If I was a route setter, working at the TC would be a dream.

When I was there, the comp room saw constant action. Local climbers came in and worked with setters to dial in the problems. Larson grabbed ladders and drill and made tweaks as necessary. Keep them fresh and keep them coming seemed to be the motto of comp boulders.

While the athletes predominantly go to ther local Momentum to train speed, the TC does have a “complete” speed route...except climbers can’t do the route from top to bottom in one go.

Rather, the route is broken up so that they can work the sections individually.

When I was there, they had some new timer technology, which would help them to better dial in starts.

The hangboard area has, of course, a Beastmaker 2000 and a Tension Grindstone Pro. Accoutrements are Tension ball slopers, pinches and angled edge-blocks, in addition to an assortment of heinous edges. There’s

ABOVE PHOTOS: The scene, including setters, equipment, psyched athletes, and, of course, Lulu.

a Grasshopper wall. There are enough assorted weights and weightbelts to sink the Titanic, except half the time the athletes are wearing them to make their 8-mil deadhangs harder. The TC is equal parts fun and serious, a place you can feel comfortable without the impersonal modernism of so many other “elite” training centers, you know, sterilized equipment, bright white walls and bleached floors. The people make the place, and as long as the climbers keep coming and cheering each other on, U.S. competition climbing has a very bright future.

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TYPICAL DAY A day in the USAC Training Center

By Francis Sanzaro A typical day at the TC includes two sessions, a morning and an afternoon session. The first session is from 9 to noon.

During our visit, it being the era of Covid, everyone had to get a temperature reading, sanitize their hands and sign the logbook.

The morning session, like the afternoon session, can include everything from speed work, cross training, bouldering, or lead/speed climbing at Momentum. Because the TC doesn’t have a lead or full speed wall, local gyms kindly allow the team to use their facilities. In fact, Delaney Miller and I arrived to Salt Lake on Sunday afternoon and beelined straight to Momentum for a quick sesh. We ran into John Brosler, the current U.S. Speed record holder, and Allison Vest, hard at work. Both are TC regulars.

Around noon the athletes go home, eat lunch, play video games, study for exams, or, if you are Sienna Kopf, do some software coding. Kopf writes software for her job.

In the morning, Josh Larson, Zack DiCristino, and Meg Coyne arrive before the athletes, sip coffee, check email, and discuss the day’s plan. Someone takes a call and escapes around a corner. There is a lot of business to be had—meetings with the USPOC, Zoom chats, other media, etc. A long, farmhouse-style table corrals the group. The table is littered with charger cords, coffee cups, and proteinbar wrappers. I think I remember seeing an empty box of

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ABOVE: Nathaniel Coleman feeling the burn after some benchmark testing.

RIGHT: Brooke Raboutou clipping in for a speed run.

pastries from a local French cafe, but I could have been hallucinating.

Adjacent the table is a massage chair, the kind you see in airports, except this is the deluxe edition. The chair is black and must have NASA technology.

It’s so good you have to hide the smile when it does its thing.

Despite the TC being surrounded on all sides by construction and industrial warehouses, it’s quiet. When the athletes show up, they know what to

do—start warming up. For that, they use the spray wall, a bouldering wall smattered with medium to forget-aboutit-tiny holds. The athletes put down their bags, stretch, do some problems, check their phones. Slowly, the place comes alive with clanging metal and bodies hitting the mats. Josh gets asked to make up a problem for someone, which he does in seconds. Zack works on a sore shoulder. Meg hops on a call. When the athletes leave, the coaches and staff either continue to work there or escape for a sec to get some food.

Nearby food is abundant and good. A favorite is a Japanese market with lunchtime sushi, which unfortunately was sold out by the time I got there. However, when visiting Japanese climber and bouldering World Cup champion Miho Nonaka came through town, she visited the market and her and the owner hit it off. Apparently, the owner can now identify climbers by their chalky hands, and climbers give her no small amount of business.

The second session is from 4 to 7. On one day, Condie and Coleman did their benchmark testing in the morning, which was full-on max exertion—one arms, deadhangs on crimps, etc., and then partook in a mock bouldering comp at night. Any one of those sessions by itself would have had me angling for the hot tub and masseuse.

For the mock competition, the music was loud, the problems hard, and some people who were not there in the morning showed up. Kai Lightner, for instance, came through and chalked up. The setters hung around, likely to watch the suitors solve their puzzles, and puzzles they were.

One problem that gave the best of the best real trouble had a giant round volume, measuring about 4-by-4 feet. You had to do some tech to get there, but once you were on the volume, it was pure heinous topout, except it was vertical, which meant you had to press the giant blob with horrible sloping feet. Sean Bailey, Nathaniel Coleman, Ben Hanna—

ABOVE: Kyra Condie, on some heinously small crimp. BELOW: Coleman imagining moves in front the spray wall.

everyone repeatedly hit the mats on this one. I heard it did get topped, but I never saw it done.

Since only two of the four qualified Olympians live in Salt Lake, I was told the full team gets together every six weeks or so, depending on increasingly hectic schedules, to train as a group.

On one such occasion, Larson, Condie and Coleman traveled to ABC to train with Duffy and Raboutou. Larson compared notes with Ryan Arment— who spearheads Colin Duffy’s training directly and is part of Brooke’s coaching—and Chris Danielson, who also works with Brooke and was that day having the four Olympians move through an agility and balance workout. Danielson has 20-plus years experience as a route setter, and is an IFSC International Chief Routesetter.

Like many of those helping train current and next-gen competitive athletes, a background in setting and coaching is proving essential. During the session at ABC, we—meaning the staff at Gym Climber—annoyed the Olympians with an extended photo shoot (see current cover) and kept them from lunch. I think I heard some complaints about being “starving.”

That made me happy. They had the right priorities.

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MEG COYNE National Teams Manager and Assistant Coach

By Francis Sanzaro Meg Coyne’s official title is National Teams Manager for USA Climbing, but she also described her job as “mother hen,” which is another way of saying a little bit of everything. Because USA Climbing has a lot of different teams across its programs—Lead, Speed, Boulder, Adult, Youth, Para, Collegiate—Coyne travels a lot.

“So my job is to be mother hen for everybody,” Coyne said.

“Part travel agent, part therapist. Keeping everyone in line and getting them where they are going.” We can add “part coach” to her resume.

Coyne, 30, has a quiet but calculated presence. She’s a listener, and chooses her words carefully. Like many of those in the inner orbit of Team USA’s competitive program, Coyne herself is a former competitor, routesetter and has been in the game for a while. She competed in Youth World Championships, for example, and is a former team coach for the Stone Summit Team, out of Atlanta. Meg got into coaching by accident, she told me, but quickly fell in love with it. In 2018, she joined USAC and in time was tasked with developing a high-performance program.

What is high performance? High performance is taking athletes and helping them reach “as best as you can to their max ability,” she said. The high performance program is intended to make U.S. athletes more competitive abroad. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s working. We have four qualified Olympians—Nathaniel Coleman, Kyra Condie, Colin Duffy and Brooke Rabatou—the max amount per country. Duffy and Raboutou live and train in Boulder, at ABC Kids Climbing

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ABOVE: Meg Coyne, team manager.

BELOW: Coyne, Josh Larson and Kyra Condie at the TC.

where they grew up, while Coleman and Condie live and train under the full-time guidance of Larson, Coyne, and the USAC support staff.

“By every statistical projection that anyone could give us, going into 2019, we maybe at very low odds could qualify one athlete for the Games. Our odds of winning a medal were something like .001 percent,” Coyne said. I was so shocked about that number I had to ask her again. “.001?” Yep, pretty much, she told me. “It was not going to happen ... a snowball’s chance in hell.” The name for these statistical forecasts at the USOPC is “medal expectancy,” and the .001 figure was based off one athlete qualifying, not four. So, yeah, go team USA. Back to that mother hen. What’s the best way to lose an athlete’s trust?

“The reasons that people trust other people vary, but the reasons that people distrust other people vary a lot more,” she said. “For some athletes, if they have a bad round and they know it’s bad, and you lie to them and tell them it wasn’t that bad, that lie might absolutely lose their trust...yet there are some athletes that need to be told it wasn’t that bad, and they might know you are lying to them, but that might make them trust you, because they know that you know that’s what they need.”

With answers like that, the future is looking good.

ZACK DICRISTINO Team Physio and Medical Manager

By Delaney Miller Sitting beside Josh Larson in a white plastic folding chair, Zack DiCristino observed the present band of athletes making their rounds from one boulder to another.

He watched their movements, offered up the occasional cheers of encouragement, and waited. It doesn’t take long.

Suddenly, he walked back to his table, an athlete in tow, in order to massage, tweak, probe or adjust whatever ailment is in need of his attention.

Be it an injury, a muscle imbalance, or general weak link, DiCristino is the team’s go-to man. Officially the National and Olympic Team physical therapist and medical manager, DiCristino assists head coach Josh Larson in designing athlete protocols to address imbalances and promote athlete health and longevity. DiCristino has been practicing physical therapy since 2003, working with professional and Olympic athletes from over 30 sports—primarily runners, skiers, snowboarders, and, of course, climbers. He draws on that base of knowledge, along with ongoing education, in his everyday practice with the USA Climbing Team.

To manage athlete needs, DiCristino has a white board pinned to the wall above his table. Time slots are demarcated and filled in with athletes’ initials. In between bookings and athlete sessions, DiCristino works from his laptop. He’s corresponding with strength and conditioning coaches from the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

Although not familiar with climbing, those coaches make

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ABOVE: Zack DiCristino works on Nathaniel Coleman.

BELOW: DiCristino has been practicing physical therapy for nearly two decades.

training recommendations based on needs and the climber archetype as described by DiCristino. With those coaches, plus Larson, he has detailed macro and micro plans for the athletes, including on- and off-thewall training. Heavy lifts are among the new training integrations.

“For some of these climbers, it was the first time they tried a back squat or first time doing a bench press,” said DiCristino. “So it’s been a lot of instruction, making sure their form is good. Telling them, ‘This is why you want to do this exercise at this time and with this amount of reps and sets.’” Kyra Condie and Nathaniel Coleman are both Olympic-qualified athletes living in Salt Lake City. DiCristino noted how since implementing these training programs, speed times are down, and overall performance is up.

It’s all a learning process.

Already an APTA board-certified orthopedic and sports clinical specialist, DiCristino is currently getting a strength and conditioning certification as well.

2024 OLYMPIC HOPEFULS Up-and-comers to keep an

eye on in the coming years.

By Delaney Miller “Don’t move to Boulder. You’ll be eaten alive.”

That’s what a friend told me when I was 18—a hungry, budding comp climber. I think he may have been right (no offense to Boulderites). The buzzsaw of the elites would very likely have turned me inside out, not due to the city, but my own insecurities, of course.

I think if I were 18 again now, Boulder, home to Team ABC (where Olympic-qualified athletes Colin Duffy and Brooke Raboutou train), might still not have lured me. As for SLC, Kyra Condie and Nathaniel Coleman—the other two Olympic qualified athletes—and almost all the top up-and-comers have moved to be there. Even those who haven’t made the move have at least made a visit to train at the TC and be in the scene that fosters the try-hard and a comp-specific training regimen. Yes, of course, future competitors are going to come from coaches and gyms all over the country, but the new place is undoubtedly Salt Lake City.

Natalia Grossman is the obvious “up-and-comer,” although the young phenom has been crushing for years now. Grossman won the 2019 National Cup circuit and was the National Bouldering Champion in 2020 as well as 2021. In the first 2021 Bouldering World Cup, in Meiringen, Switzerland, Grossman placed third, beating out household

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ABOVE: The crew, sharing beta and encouragement.

BELOW: Natalia Grossman with some lock-off training.

names like Akiyo Noguchi and Miho Nonaka. The 19-year-old, who moved from Boulder to Salt Lake City after the pandemic allowed her to finish up school online, will certainly be a top contender for Paris 2024.

Same for Sean Bailey, 24. Bailey nearly qualified for the Olympics in 2019, after placing ninth in the Toulouse Olympic Qualifier—one spot behind Coleman, one spot out of the invitational bracket. Bailey took the ensuing year to truly make a name for himself outside, putting down two V16s, Box Therapy, in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, and Grand Illusion, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, last November. Originally from Shoreline, Washington, Bailey has joined the Salt Lake City movement.

Other transplants have formed a “girls’ house,” as it was referred to.

Cloe Coscoy, Sienna Kopf, Quinn Mason and Thea Wulff: all 18 or 19, all strong, badass climbers. Coscoy was the 2019 Youth Pan American Bouldering Champion. Kopf is a true all-arounder, having competed on the US team on the World Cup circuit for all three disciplines in 2019. Mason is a five-time youth USA team member, and Wulff recently qualified for the 2021 Salt Lake City Bouldering World Cups. Watching these four ladies, it’s clear they’re all best friends. They

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arrive, do their exercises, joke, laugh and leave together.

Their camaraderie juxtaposed with casual one-arm workouts: an authentic display of femininity at its finest.

And maybe you’ve already read about it in Vogue, but there’s another girls’ house, with Condie and Allison Vest.

Even if you didn’t know they were living together, it doesn’t take a genius to guess their level of friendship. The two are always hanging around each, training together and posting videos featuring one another.

Other counterparts are Ben Hanna and John Brosler, although they’re not sharing the same house. Hanna, 22 and originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, dominated the 2019 National Cup series. This year, he nabbed a spot on the U.S. Bouldering team. Brosler, 24, is a six-time Speed National Champion, a National Speed record holder, and was the 2018 Pan-American Speed Champion.

A few who haven’t made the Salt Lake City move, but we’d be remiss not to mention, include Kyle Cullen, Emma Hunt, and Ross Fulkerson. All four hold promising futures on the competition circuit, and possibly for Paris 2024. Cullen, 16, made the 2021 Bouldering team, placing 25th in her first Bouldering World Cup, in Meiringen. Hunt, 18, broke the U.S. women’s Speed record not once, not twice, but three times at the U.S. 2021 Combined Nationals, ultimately ending with 7.56 seconds, a mere .60 seconds off Russian climber Iuliia Kaplina’s world record. Fulkerson, 20, like Cullen, made this year’s Bouldering team and placed 16th in Meiringen.

JAN VIRT (SECOND FROM BOTTOM)

TOP ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Sienna Kopf, Thea Wulff, Cloe Coscoy. MIDDLE: Quinn Mason, Natalia Grossman, Ben Hanna. LEFT: Ross Fulkerson.

BELOW LEFT: Sean Bailey.

HOW TO WATCH SPEED CLIMBING The rules, the format, and what to look for.

By John Brosler

COMPETITION FORMAT The speed-climbing route is standardized, meaning climbers around the world train and compete on exactly the same route. The wall is 45 feet tall, consists of 20 handholds and 11 footholds, is five degrees overhung, and the route is set according to an official map in the IFSC Rulebook.

Before the competition begins, climbers get two practice runs on the wall. Even though the route is standardized, each wall may feel slightly different due to weather or the condition of the climbing holds and wall (climbers usually train on speed walls that have been well-used, while everything at competitions is generally brand-new). This is the competitors’ chance to complete their warm-up and get a feel for climbing on the competition wall.

The qualifying round is next, where athletes get two chances to climb the route and log times. They are then ranked based on their fastest runs, and the top 16 competitors move on to the next round.

The next rounds of competition are head-to-head races, which are structured with March Madness-style knockout brackets. The 16th-fastest climber goes against the athlete ranked first. Climber 15 goes against climber two, 14 against three, and so on. The winner of each bracket moves on to the next round, where number eight faces off against one, seven against two … You get the idea. Competitors have only one

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Bassa Mawem (left) and Ludovico Fossali (right) at the 2019 Villars World Cup.

Speed specialists at the Olympics Men Rishat Khaibullin (KAZ) Ludovico Fossali (ITA) Bassa Mawem (FRA) Women Aleksandra Miroslaw (POL) Anouck Jaubert (FRA) Iuliia Kaplina (RUS) YiLing Song (CHN)

chance to climb in each race. When a climber loses a race, the person is eliminated from the competition immediately and ranked according to time among those who have lost that round. When only four competitors are left, those who lost in the penultimate round subsequently race each other for the bronze medal.

DIFFERENT BETA Even though the speed route is internationally standardized, you’ll see varying sequences used by different climbers. Each climber chooses a sequence based on height, strength, and personal climbing style.

For example, you’ll see many climbers skip the left-most holds at the very beginning of the route, and dyno straight up to the holds directly above the starting holds, in a move known as the Tomoa Skip (pioneered by Tomoa Narasaki of Japan). This sequence is more direct than the zig-zag pattern created by climbing all the way to the left-most holds, and then immediately

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC

Ever heard of Jim Bridwell, John Long, and Billy Westbay, a.k.a., the Stonemasters? They were the first climbers to ascend the Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite in a single day, in 1975. Their record prompted a battle, one that is ongoing— for who had the guts and the stamina to do the Nose the fastest. While these Stonemasters are perhaps the best known example of early speed record chasers, climbers have long been racing the clock.

The official speed route that will be used in the 2020 Tokyo Games is a far cry from the Nose. It’s shorter, for one, and it hasn’t been around as long. While the record for the Nose sits just under two hours, set by Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, it’s nearing sub-five seconds for today’s wall.

Unlike those for setting the Nose record, the rules governing the speed discipline in Tokyo get granular. Whoever reaches the top the fastest wins (hopefully that’s obvious). But here’s what you need to know to really follow along.

SLIPS CAN HAPPEN AT VIRTUALLY ANY TIME, ON ANY PART OF THE ROUTE.

EDDIE FOWKE/IFSC (UPPER FIGHT), JON GLASSBERG/LOUDER THAN 11, (LOWER LEFT), JESSICA TALLEY /LOUDER THAN 11 (LOWER RIGHT)

climbing towards the right to continue upward. However, this move involves performing a very close hand-foot match on the first hold, and therefore; may not be the best option for a taller climber. It’s also a powerful move and may not suit climbers who can’t quickly initiate the movement or carry the momentum. Taller climbers or those with less power may opt for different variations that better suit their body types and abilities.

SLIPS Slipping in a speed competition can be devastating, and often means the end of a competition for a climber. A slip in qualifiers is not as detrimental as one in the knockout round, because competitors have two chances to climb the route cleanly.

The knockout format that follows, which provides climbers only one chance to climb the route per round, makes the margin for error extremely small. Slips can happen at virtually any time, on any part of the route.

Anouck Jaubert (left) and YiLing Song (right) at the 2019 Xiamen World Cup.

Notable Speed Teams Russia Indonesia China France Poland Ukraine Kazakhstan

time on the first run. A false start in the 1/8 final would lead to an eighth-place finish.

Occasionally, a competitor may commit a technical false start for reacting too quickly after the starting signal. It is theoretically impossible to have a reaction time of less than 0.1 seconds, so a start within this window would be considered a technical false start.

False-start rules exist because in the past, climbers would sometimes false start on purpose in an attempt to throw off their opponents during the knockout rounds. To stop this from happening, false starts were banned completely.

TACTICS: SLOW RUNS FROM FAST CLIMBERS Because the cost of slipping is high, competitors often slow down on purpose to maximize consistency during a competition. This strategy is used when a climber knows that he or she is significantly faster than an opponent and does not need to climb near potential in order to win a race. Climbers also do this in qualifiers, so they have at least one “safe” time that will advance them to the knockout rounds.

This is a strategy that we are very likely to see from speed specialists at the Olympics, who are more proficient at the discipline than the lead and boulder counterparts.

QUALIFIERS MATTER FALSE STARTS A false start is the worst thing that can happen to a speed competitor. A climber who false starts is ranked last in the relevant round. So, a false start in qualifiers would result in a last-place finish, even if the climber recorded a valid

John Brosler has been climbing for 13 years. He’s a six-time Open National Champion and national record holder.

In lead and bouldering competitions, competitors are ranked in each round with no influence from previous rounds (apart from countbacks in the event of a tie).

However, because of the knockout format in Speed climbing, your results in qualifiers directly affect who you will race in the knockout rounds. Therefore, it’s always more beneficial to qualify in a competitive spot, so that theoretically, you’re racing slower climbers in the knockout rounds.

W W W . G Y M C L I M B E R M A G . C O M 85

CHRIS DANIELSON What keeps you stoked about routesetting?

The unknown and constant newness of it. Just like the audience and the climbers, you never really know how climbers are going to react and perform and how a competition will feel and flow. That’s the addiction. Ironically, it’s also one of the biggest challenges for comp climbing.

What keeps a World Cup routesetter up at night?

In general, there’s just an underlying buzz of nervous energy, especially the night before a comp, and this is probably similar to what it is for the athletes. All the possibilities that swirl around mentally, whether a hold turned a quarter inch to the left or right would be better. I rarely remember dreams, but I’ll wake up early sometimes on the competition morning and vaguely remember flickers of setting boulders (that don’t actually exist) or watching the competition (which hasn’t happened yet).

What makes an elite setter?

It’s all subjective so I hesitate a bit here. Coupled with being professional, hard-working, and being able to see the big picture, the best setters can be problem solvers, strong climbers, organized, funny, empathetic, reflective, motivating—there’s no model because no one routesetter makes a competition.

In a final round of boulders, what are setters trying to achieve?

The short answer is excitement. On the practical side, there’s an aim for relative fairness. Different climbers

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By Francis Sanzaro

with individual characteristics have to execute a wide range of skills. While it’s more nuanced, we’re consistently testing things like strength, power, balance, flexibility, balance, and coordination. We also hope they will all be ranked differently and that’s not easy to “create,” but fairness, diversity and dividing the field are basic fundamentals.

Excitement is then a key target, however ambiguous and elusive it may be. Our main goal is not simply to entertain, as if it’s just a demonstration for spectators of wild climbing. People can watch all that on social media if they want to. There’s a lot in our minds but I suppose the main thing is we’re trying to create the opportunity for a sporting encounter. For the athletes, through their intensity and their skills, to create the excitement for all of us.

How much of a factor is setting in the final result?

This is an impossible question in some ways, and I admit it’s one I don’t love.

There are so many layers.

The creation of the field of play through routesetting is what the athletes engage in and so in one sense it directly relates, of course. If setters just screwed on horizontal campus rungs then we might say the setting would factor into the result pretty significantly. The best campus-climber would win, right? Afterwards there would be a great deal of talk about the setters choosing to set a campus rung comp. But if everyone knew well before that it was going to be a campus affair, got motivated and trained for it, what would everyone talk about? We

wouldn’t talk about the routesetting at all (even though it was still integral), we would talk about who did the best campusing and that would be that.

Is the height of a hoop a factor in the final result of a basketball game?

Does the position of holes on a golf course determine performances? Is the design of a skateboarding street course a factor in who wins the contest? All these elements are factors, but they are factors in the context of a sport’s overall format. The speed route was originally “set,” and the orientation of holds (the choices the setter made) does factor into the results in a way, right? But as it is known in advance and practiced, we are focused not on the nature of the route, but on what the athletes do, who wins, and how exciting watching that is.

On the one hand, yes, setting is a factor, but the ranking result—who wins and how the battle shakes out— that is up to the athletes, period.

What is different about routesetting or climbing then, that makes it so interesting and or makes the sport unique?

Though there are plenty of other

CAROLINE TREADWAY

A chat with an IFSC Chief Routesetter and Owner of Thread Climbing

Competitions evolve and develop with routesetters. Danielson working at a Lead World Cup a decade ago in Boulder, Colorado.

sports where the field of play changes, in climbing the radical uniqueness is the degree to which it changes. If that isn’t enough, each new challenge is unrehearsed, only unveiled when the competition begins.

It’s all about degrees, and I think the format climbing works within and that the U.S. has adapted to is leagues different in variability and unpredictability when compared to other sports. In climbing, like the athletes themselves, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re all in the same boat, and it’s shaky.

In any sport, scoring is the essential guide by which we follow the action, and the international scoring is now widely viewed, even internally, as not doing a very good job of that. In many sports, we may not know what’s going to happen in terms of who is going to win, but we do know what to expect in the playing field before the event begins, and even if we’re not a practitioner able to keep up with details or strategy of a game, we can at least follow the competitive encounter easily with a basic numerical scoring system.

Things become very fresh, even visceral, once the curtain opens for

all to see and the athletes try the unknown. That’s different and this is the world routesetters live in. We just pour out the Legos, stack the blocks new each time and see what happens.

What we do exists in the context of a bigger picture and remembering that keeps us all aware of how unusual it is and what the challenges are.

Personally, I think the format and scoring of competitions will evolve in the future and all steps in that direction, versus adapting to or staying with the status quo, are good steps.

What do you think people don’t know or understand about routesetting?

We are not magicians and we do not make the results. Climbers will be appreciative or critical, naturally, but even unconsciously I think there can be this underlying misperception that we intended or could predict something we did not or cannot. Someone says such and such competition was “too easy,” let’s say. If the problems had been harder, if they had just been challenged “more” or differently, then they would have performed better, ranked higher.

The routesetters might get a look or

a comment that says, “Why did you do that?” as if the setter really knew and predicted it would play out that way and clearly should have done something different.

The thing is, whatever everyone else feels, most likely the routesetters already feel it too, but we didn’t know what was going to happen either! We can only ask ourselves what if. Just like a competitor will say, “If I had only…

I might have won.” Our what-ifs are “If I had only tried that method,” or “If we had just added that jib,” or even as simple as, “If we had reordered the problems.”

On the flip side, people may congratulate setters on how the energy of a competition was really intense: “It was amazing how so and so figured out some crazy beta,” or “so cool that she won on the last problem.” But these things are not intended or predicted either. When it goes well, it’s typically a balance of luck and how the climbers perform, the choices they make. It’s about how they engaged on the platform and if that sparked a special feeling and reaction with the spectators.

Any final words?

I think of routesetters as stewards of the sport in a lot of ways. I admire many of my setting mentors and peers because it’s not just a selfish endeavor for them. Rather they know that what’s interesting about it is that it involves everyone else, and they have a genuine, shared appreciation for climbing in and of itself. The abstract idea of the routesetter is the technical person grinding away in the shadows, independent spirits obsessing about our creativity and just climbing over and over and over. And that’s true, that’s us. But setters are also often passionate climbers with a strong appreciation of the outdoors, the culture and roots, people who value and help develop communities, structure, and ideas.

At least I’m happy to say that’s how I approach it. Whether crafting a new design on a wall or in some other realm, setters are often working behind the scenes to protect, develop and move the sport forward.

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RYAN ARMENT

COACH OF TWO AMERICAN OLYMPIANS, ROCK GUIDE, AMONG OTHER THINGS

By Francis Sanzaro

The general public doesn’t know much about Ryan Arment, but that needs to change. Arment has been coaching Colin Duffy and Brooke Raboutou since they were kids. In case you are not good at math, that’s 50% of the U.S. Olympicqualified team.

Francis: What’s your official title?

Ryan: Head coach, head setter, head guide. It’s bizarre to take the three hats but, yeah, that’s the title.

Francis: What first got you into coaching?

Ryan: I’ve always liked working with kids as far back as high school. I was a babysitter, and that’s not typical, I think. I lived in Breckenridge for a while, and while I was there, I got this part-time job coaching like five kids at the Rec Center on their little climbing wall and really dug it. When I moved to Boulder, I was looking for work and had a bunch of experience as a carpenter and ended up working building the [ABC] gym. And then as I met Brooke and Shawn [Raboutou], through their father Didier, I started being more and more psyched to work with them. Once we were done building I stuck around … [Coaching] wasn’t the kind of thing that I set out to do. I have a Bachelor of Science in Geography. It’s so powerful coaching, and it’s so much fun. It’s hard to feel like it’s a job. Most of the time I’m just having fun.

Arment with fellow ABC coach Claire Gordon (left) and Robyn Erbesfield-Raboutou (right), owner of ABC. 88 G Y M C L I M B E R

Francis: What are the top three traits of successful coaches?

Ryan: Presence, patience and perseverance.

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Francis: What is your relationship to Olympic-qualified athletes Colin Duffy and Brooke Raboutou?

Ryan: I have coached both Colin and Brooke since they were kids. I’ve climbed with them all over America and Europe. And yeah, it’s been awesome. … I wasn’t always the head coach when I was coaching them. But I’ve been their coach for that long. I manage Colin’s coaching directly and I’m part of Brooke’s coaching team.

You’ve got to be there. The foundation of all relationships is presence. You’re there for every practice. You’re not coaching from the back seat; you’re front and center. It’s important to me the coach is the first person the athlete sees when they’re done with a competition. And maybe the first person they see when they enter the building.

Patience is key because it’s a trialand-error process. As a coach, you’re always trying to find the right thing to say at the right moment to get a change out of the athlete. I make a lot of mistakes with my athletes, and as long as those don’t lead to injury, it’s just learning from that and then doing better with the next athlete, or learning from the experience with that specific athlete.

And then perseverance is important because you can’t quit. You have to just keep carrying on no matter what, through losses, through injuries, through frustrations, whether it’s with an organization, or a facility or another coach. Just being able to keep the positivity high and carry on. We get stronger as we overcome obstacles and conflict and I think persevering through that adversity is where we get growth and then we get stronger.

Francis: Tell me about your coaching style?

Ryan: I’m pretty loud, pretty high energy. There’s a little purpose behind most of the things I do. And one of the purposes I have for being so loud, even in a low-key session, is that my athletes have comfort; then at a larger format situation where they hear my voice in the crowd so they’re like, “oh he’s yelling the same things he does every time.” And I think there’s a lot of value to that, especially in a sport like climbing.

Francis: How do you coach someone through failure? How do you coach them through success?

Ryan: I like to encourage an immediate and complete processing of the experience. So, for example, if an athlete has a really great competition

I THINK TRUST IS THE FOUNDATION OF ANY GOOD COACH-ATHLETE RELATIONSHIP...AND SO I TRY TO JUST BE AS OPEN AS I CAN ABOUT MY OWN PROCESS. and comes out better than they ever expected, I celebrate them. And then it’s over, it’s back to practice, it’s back to normal and the same goes for the opposite. Somebody has a horrible session. It’s like, “You know, this is what you could have done differently. Now we’re moving on.” And so I like to encourage the athletes to be present in the moment and whatever that presence is, is OK, we can make it better in the future, and we can learn from it after, but there’s no need to drag any of that stuff out.

Francis: How do you coach around resistance from athletes?

Ryan: I certainly have resistance from athletes ... I think trust is the foundation of a good coach-athlete relationship.

I also try to be really open with my athletes. … If a workout routine isn’t working, then I’ll just be like, “Hey, look, I tried this, the schedule doesn’t work, we’re changing it.” And so I try to just be as open as I can about my own process.

Francis: Tell me about training and getting stronger.

Ryan: Typically if you can build up a weakness, you’ll find that your grade will follow. And I think that also helps your process. So rather than looking for a way to get stronger, just look for a way to improve yourself, and then there’s no goal.

It’s not like you have to climb this route. Or you have to do this thing, because what happens when you send the climb?

It’s over. The joy of sending or winning is so short. It is the shortest thing that you’re going to do. And so the process is where the joy has to come from. And if the joy comes from the process, then you’re going to improve the rest of your life. There’s no reason you’ll stop getting better. And that’ll also lead to curiosity. You’ll find yourself thinking, “Oh, that’s cool. What else could I do? Like, what’s my kneebargame like?”

Francis: How has your job changed since the Olympics?

Ryan: I don’t think it’s changed much for me, honestly.

It’s just another comp. And the process is so much more important than the result. I’m excited at the opportunity to see these athletes get to compete on that stage. And I’m proud of them for being there. But as far as my job, or my day-to-day coaching, how I treat Colin and Brooke relative to other athletes, I don’t think it’s changed anything.

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WHAT THE OLYMPICS MEANS TO ME

By Alex Johnson

I remember the first time I read an article in a magazine about competitive climbing. It was a 1999 issue of Rock and Ice and the article was written by a young athlete trying to explain what the “JCCA” was. She made a few jokes about what the acronym stood for, things like “Jumping Cheese Cows Assemble,” and “Juicy Cowgirl Collaboration Army.”

I was 10 at the time, and had just received my official JCCA membership card in the mail. Kate was just a few years older than me, but I looked up to her. She was the daughter of Jeanne Niemer, the executive director of the JCCA at the time. I thought it was so cool Kate was writing about youth comp climbing for a magazine, and I felt a surge of pride as I read those words, because I was part of the organization.

JCCA stands for Junior Competition Climbing Association.

It was founded in 1998, and would eventually grow into the USCCA, and ultimately become what we all know today as the national governing body of our sport: USA Climbing.

The JCCA is where many of our climbing heroes started.

Athletes like Emily Harrington, Beth Rodden, Ethan Pringle, Angie Payne, Daniel Woods—all of whom now have legend

90 G Y M C L I M B E R

Johnson was the second American to win a Bouldering World Cup abroad, and the first to win one on U.S. soil.

Competitive climbing being a part of the highest level of sport on the world’s biggest stage is a monumental achievement, and something the IFSC and USA Climbing (and its many names preceding) have been striving towards since I was a young girl. In fact, that was Niemer’s vision even in the late 1990s: “I remember our first meeting with the AAC (American Alpine Club) asking them to let us take over as the governing body so that one day we could make climbing an Olympic sport. Initially people thought climbing would first get into the Winter Olympics with ice climbing, so at the time, the AAC made sense.”

I had written off the chance that I might be one of our sport’s first Olympians years ago. I’d wager everyone on my list of JCCA originals did as well.

In 2016, when it was first announced that climbing would be included, I did some quick math and thought, In my 30s? No chance. I won my first Open Bouldering Nationals in 2003 at age 14, my first Bouldering World Cup in 2008 at age 19, and after quitting the international circuit in 2012 with a fourth place finish at the Bouldering World Cup in Vail, I thought I had peaked. I was the strongest I’d ever been at that event, and if I couldn’t podium then, what chance did I have at qualifying for a coveted spot on Team USA eight years later?

At that moment, I ruled the Olympics out as an impossibility for me. I continued to dabble, but spent most of my time climbing leisurely outside. I was burnt out.

I’d been climbing professionally for years, and disliked the trend of trying

BREE ROBLES (BOTH)

status, but in the late 90s were just bright young talents with big dreams.

Why is this relevant? Because back then if you had asked any of us, fresh out of middle school and going to Nationals in dark, dusty old rock gyms, if climbing would ever join the Olympics, our answer would have been, “Not in our lifetimes.” Turns out we were a bit off; it just wasn’t in our competitive lifetimes. Or was it?

to continually reinvent myself to push limits and stay relevant. I needed a break from the sport, the industry.

So in 2016, I took the time off that was much-needed. I thought my best climbing days were behind me, and the feeling left me a bit lost and stagnant.

I was living in Las Vegas, and was spending more time in clubs than at crags, so when a job offer came to move home to coach at my old gym, Vertical Endeavors, in Minneapolis, I decided it was probably best to leave Sin City in the rearview.

Coaching reignited the fire in me.

My team had little crushers ranging in age from 11 to 18. Their love for the sport and training, and their hunger for learning, were inspirational. I began climbing for fun again, which led to training. Soon I felt stronger, fitter, and better than ever. It was the summer of 2018, and I approached my mom with the idea of diving back into competing to try to qualify for the Olympic team.

“I think I’d always regret if I didn’t at least try. Really try,” I told her.

She whole-heartedly agreed, and my journey back onto the comp circuit began.

I fought hard throughout the 2019 season, and was reminded of how mentally and emotionally taxing competing is. The combined format was new to all of us, and our strategies varied on whether to focus on all three disciplines equally, or throw all our eggs in our specialty. When Brooke Raboutou became the United States’s first qualified Olympian, at the World Championships in August 2019, she showed us that it really was possible.

Of course, it meant that with one spot taken, only one remained. But instead of seeing it as lessening my chances by 50 percent, I saw it as increasing my chances by 100 percent! Brooke made the possibility of qualifying a reality. It was no longer a dream out of reach. I thought, if Brookie can do it, maybe I can too!

I moved to Salt Lake City that summer, along with several other

A veteran and highly decorated competitor, Johnson tried her best to qualify for the Olympics. She didn’t, but there’s a very happy ending.

U.S. Team athletes, to train together and take advantage of the world-class local gyms and USA Climbing’s exclusive training center. Unfortunately, I didn’t rank high enough to get an invite to the Toulouse Olympic Qualifier. I remember waking up at 3 a.m. to watch the live stream of that event, rooting for my friends who had qualified, but also crying.

My Olympic chance had passed me over, but being back on the comp circuit even for just a year was an experience I’d never take back. My friends who qualified deserve it. Brooke is hands-down one of the most talented climbers out there, a lifer coming from a family of incredible athletes. Nathaniel Coleman, the pensive, inquisitive, perfectionist with a mind of steel. Kyra Condie works harder and wants it more than anyone I know. And Colin Duffy, the young, up-and-coming all-around talent with an unmatched competitive drive.

After my failure to qualify, I immediately capitalized on my newfound fitness on outdoor boulders. My lifestyle changed a lot when I made the decision to try for the Olympics. My training got extremely precise, my diet honed, and I stopped drinking alcohol. My body was performing better than ever, and riding out the strength, skill, and fitness I gained from being back on the World Cup circuit allowed me to send hard new climbs and finish projects I’d written off. Ultimately, I returned to a long-term project of mine, The Swarm (V13/14) in Bishop, a consolation prize almost parallel to an Olympic qualification for me. I had first tried this boulder in 2011 after a season of missing every World Cup final, and what followed felt like a decade of public failure in comps and outside. It was incredible to finally stand on top of The Swarm and get that win, as if every loss I’d experienced in my career led me to that one moment of success.

As cliche as it sounds, everything happens for a reason.

The journey of trying to qualify changed so much for me. I rediscovered my love for climbing. I love living in Utah with my little family. I put a decade-long nemesis to rest … all because I tried and failed to qualify for the Olympics.

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WE ARE GOING TO THE OLYMPICS

and we’ll join surfing and a few others At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, climbing won’t be the only newcomer.

Making their debuts are surfing, skateboarding, karate, baseball and softball. What took so long?

Skateboarding and surfing, while newer sports than karate and baseball, are practiced hands at holding high-level international competition. Karate, too, has had a competitive format in place for decades. Same goes for baseball, though the latter feels the least “global” of the incoming crop of sports.

Note how the initial paragraph starts off with the phrase “2020 Olympics,” which is awkward because the Olympics are taking place in 2021. For that we can thank Covid. The discrepancy has produced, of course, its own Google question: “Tokyo 2021 or Tokyo 2020?” Because of the size of the event—think millions of products and marketing materials and highres logos—scrubbing everything of the number 2020 was infeasible.

So, now, we are seeing Tokyo 2021 Oympics everywhere, because that is how people think and search. But these are the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.

Our journey started in 2014 with an unanimous decision of approval of the “Olympic Agenda 2020” by the IOC. Since then, thousands of pages have been produced—approvals, meeting notes, outlines, charter agreements. All that work by the IOC, IFSC, USOPC, USAC, among others, culminated in “Sport Climbing” being added to the Olympic roster. Climbers will be vying for a gold, bronze or 92 G Y M C L I M B E R

silver in one event: the combined.

The combined format requires the highest combined score across three disciplines: Speed, Bouldering, and Lead. At first, the Olympic prospect, and the format, created quite a stink.

Some climbers said they weren’t going to watch the Olympics, said that Speed really wasn’t part of climbing. In the end, it was about the athletes. We already had competitive international climbers. The Olympics were icing on the cake.

A brief yet interesting history of the events is thus: (i) the first modern Olympic Games were in 1896, in Athens, Greece, showcasing 43 events; (ii) since 1980, over 100 events have been added, and (iii) in 2021, five new events were added, including climbing.

Why these five events? Why now? What is the value added to the Olympics? According to a 2016 report by the Olympic Programme, the value climbing brings to the Olympics lands squarely in three categories, which is interesting because it’s an outsider’s perspective on what our sport adds to global sporting culture:

NOVELTY “Sport climbing would bring something totally new, as it is not similar to or a variant of any existing sports on the Olympic programme.

It would be the only sport where vertical ascent is the goal.”

YOUTH “Sport climbing is a popular sport, with strong and special appeal to younger generations. Climbing is a natural instinct, which is why it

By Francis Sanzaro

resonates with young people and will engage them further.”

FRESH LIFESTYLE “It proposes a fresh, dynamic lifestyle with strong sport values. It also inspires sustainability through its affordable and environmentally friendly consideration.”

There you have it. Climbing is new, young, a lifestyle supporting values, one of those being environmentalism.

In a Team USA media summit, Kyra Condie, one of two women from the U.S. to qualify, said: “The fact that climbing is in the Olympics really suits the Olympic motto in general.

Citius, Altius, Fortius is higher, faster, stronger, and it really relates to climbing. I think higher is Lead climbing, faster is Speed and stronger is Bouldering. So it’s just kind of cool that there’s that relation to that.”

But, what, exactly, are the Olympics? You could be crass and say it’s a more expensive, better attended event than the World Cup or various invitationals. But it’s more. Growing up, I wanted to be an Olympian. I didn’t care what event.

As a climber, I didn’t have that opportunity, not that I could have qualified anyway, but others could have. Chris Sharma would surely have qualified in his day. Same with Anna Stohr, Robyn ErbesfieldRaboutou, François Legrand, Patrick Edlinger, and others. I think about them. I wonder if they feel gyped, or a mix of FOMO. It’s a watershed moment, let’s enjoy it: our Tokyo 2021 ... sorry, make that Tokyo 2020.

Janja Garnbret of Slovenia competes during the women’s finals of the IFSC Climbing World Cup in April, in Meiringen, Switzerland. She won, as she usually does.

BY THE NUMBERS

20th

Gold medal attained in World Cup competition by Adam Ondra, clinched with his win at the Meiringen World Cup, April 17. He is a clear podium favorite.

7th

Consecutive Bouldering World Cup win for Janja Garnbret, who won all six Bouldering World Cups in 2019 (there were none in 2020), and also won in Meiringen. In total possessing 35 World Cup / World Championship wins, she is heavily favored for gold.

10

Years between the time Alex Johnson, now 32 and a former two-time World Cup winner, first tried and finally, in March 2021, succeeded in her campaign on The Swarm (V13 /14), Buttermilks. A crucial factor was her return to competitions in hopes of making the Olympics. She did not qualify but returning to events and top fitness were key factors in this great personal success.

GETTY/ MARCO KOST

25

Years Marco Scolaris has been in charge of international competition climbing, beginning in 1996 as president of the UIAA Commission for Competition Climbing. He founded the IFSC in 2007, and has just been reelected to its presidency through 2025, hence presiding through two Olympics, Tokyo 2020 (in 2021) and Paris 2024. Debbie Gawrych, former president of USA Climbing, was reelected Secretary General, hence serving through both Olympics as well.

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