Sport climbing at the Summer Olympics

Competition climbing has been part of the Summer Olympic Games on two occasions. It was first included as a special sport in the 2020 Games and will become a regular sport in the 2028 Games. Athletes take part in three main types of climbing: bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing. In the 2020 Olympics, all three were combined into one event, but in the 2024 Olympics, speed climbing became its own separate event. Slovenia has won the most gold medals so far, with two, while Austria, Japan, and the United States each have won three medals in total.

Bid for inclusion

Competition climbing was suggested to be part of the Olympics in 2015 by the International Federation of Sport Climbing. Later that year, it was put on a list with baseball, softball, skateboarding, surfing, and karate for possible inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics. In June 2016, leaders of the International Olympic Committee decided to support adding all these sports. Finally, on August 3, 2016, it was officially approved for the 2020 Games.

Competition format

At the 2020 Summer Olympics, athletes competed in two climbing events: men's combined and women's combined. The events included three types of climbing: competition speed climbing, competition bouldering, and competition lead climbing. Some climbers were not happy with this choice.

The group in charge of climbing explained that they could only award one gold medal per gender, and they wanted to include speed climbing. Their main goal was to get all three climbing types into the Olympics, and they thought they could change the rules later. This plan worked, and at the 2024 Summer Olympics, climbing events were split into separate boulder-and-lead and speed climbing competitions.

Starting at the 2028 Summer Olympics, boulder and lead climbing will have their own separate medal events.

Technical information

For Olympic sport climbing, special experts called route setters prepare the climbs. In lead climbing, the difficulty for both men and women is set between two very hard levels. In bouldering, men’s routes are set between two very hard levels, and women’s routes are set between slightly easier but still very hard levels.

NB:

• Lead grades are given in French Numerical and grades in brackets () are in American YDS.
• Boulder grade are given in V-Grades and grades in brackets () are in Fb-Grades.
• Due to the climbing routes being at the highest level, routes cannot be sufficiently tested, therefore the exact grade of each route is unknown, and may not reflect the target range.

Summary

Sport climbing has been part of the Summer Olympic Games on two occasions. It was chosen as a special sport for the 2020 and 2024 games, and it will become a regular sport for the 2028 games. Athletes take part in three types of climbing: bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing.

Events

Participating nations

Many countries have joined in the Olympic climbing events. The table shows how many climbers each country sent to the games in each year.

Olympic records history

Medal table

As of the women's combined event of 2024 Olympics

Current program