Rock by rock, climbing set to scale Olympic wall at long last

Sport climbing summited the Olympic wall for Tokyo 2020. It should be all uphill from there.

An activity on the rise due to its combination of physical activity and exhilaration will climb a new frontier when the first rock is grabbed at the Olympics on Aug. 3.

Here's everything you should know about climbing:

The basics

Controversy! Because climbing was only allocated one Olympic medal from the International Olympic Committee for Tokyo 2020, it combined three disciplines.

In typical competition, bouldering, speed climbing and lead climbing are all their own events.

But at the Olympics, 20 men and 20 women will each compete in each event. The podium, and overall standings, are then determined by multiplying an individual's ranking from each event.

So say Canada's Sean McColl is second in bouldering, fourth in lead climbing and sixth in speed climbing. His total would be 2x4x6, which equals 48.

The format meant athletes, who typically specialize in one or two of the three disciplines, quickly needed to learn the third.

WATCH | Sport climbing, explained:

Sport Explainer: Sport Climbing

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Sport climbing is a new Olympic discipline at Tokyo 2020. Get to know the sport.

In boulderingfinals, athletes are given four minutes to climb up to three routes (called boulder problems) on a shorter wall than the other two disciplines. You can fall and retry as many times as needed think of it like the NBA's dunk contest.

In speed climbing, it's a straight sprint to the top of a 15-metre wall that takes the fastest men less than six seconds and the fastest women just under seven. The finalis contested in a bracket format.

Lead climbing is how you might have tried rock climbing before. Climbers have six minutes to scale a 15-metre wall as high as possible. If you fall, the height you reached is the one recorded.

Podium contenders will have to be careful not to tank their chances with too poor a ranking in their worst event. At least two-top three finishes, plus another in the middle of the pack, should get the job done.

The multiplier means every single spot is important if the spots were added together, one or two places might not mean much. But with multiplication, the stakes could grow exponentially.

The participants

Of the three new sports excluding returning ones such as baseball and softball, and a new discipline like 3x3 basketball Canada has the best shot to climb the podium in, well, climbing.

McColl, 33 of North Vancouver, B.C., has won four combined world championships, though he only narrowly qualified for the Olympics with a 10th place finish at a 2019 world championship.

After appearing in front of the IOC to push for the addition of climbing, McColl found himself needing first or second in a lead climbing event to get to Tokyo. He then nailed what he called a "reckless" climb after originally clipping into his harness incorrectly to punch his ticket.

Still, McColl remains one of the more skilled competitors in all three events, with 34 total World Cup podiums in his career. He specializes in lead and bouldering, but he's strong enough in speed to prevent a huge number from blowing up his total score.

Family friend Alannah Yip, a 27-year-old from Vancouver, needed to win the 2020 Pan Am championships, but she pulled it off after placing fifth in speed, third in lead and first in boulder (for a total score of 15, which may give you an idea what it takes to land on the Olympic podium.)

WATCH | McColl, Yip on Olympic preparation:

Go behind the scenes with Canada's Olympic climbing team

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In this episode of Team Canada Today Andi Petrillo joins Alannah Yip's climbing practice and goes into Sean McColl's climbing cave he built in a spare room.

But Yip, who has a mechanical engineering degree, will likely be in tougher to reach the podium than McColl.

One reason for that is Janja Garnbret.

Think Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Mikael Kingsbury, U.S. women's basketball. Garnbret is that dominant.

The 22-year-old Slovenian swept six bouldering World Cup events in 2019, the first person ever to accomplish the feat. Garnbret is nearly as unbeatable in lead. If she can hold her own in speed, she'll likely be headed straight to the top of the podium.

On the men's side, the Czech Republic's Adam Ondra is considered the favourite, but not a lock like Garnbret.

Ondra was disqualified from the event in which McColl took the last Olympic spot in 2019 before rebounding to book his ticket at a 2020 event.

But Ondra is not solely a competition climber. Though he's well-rounded like McColl, he also devotes plenty of time to bouldering outdoors, leaving him beatable on the plastic.

In both the women's and men's events, host Japan boasts multiple athletes capable of landing on the podium.

Why now?

More than any other new sport, climbing wants to use the Olympics to extend its international reach.

Though it's entrenched as an activity, the Games can help climbing assert itself as a sport and competition.

And growth has already begun: at Paris 2024, climbing was allocated two podiums per gender, allowing it to separate speed climbing from the other two disciplines while including more athletes overall.

One step at a time.