Was Climbing “Better” Before It Was an Olympic Sport?
I’ve never been a big fan of the Olympics, but I’ve also never been a big fan of any sports. (The best thing I can say about the Superbowl is that it empties out the rock gyms.) I’ve always been active, the sort of person who gets fulfillment by going out and doing things rather than passively watching others doing them, which is why I became a climber: I can push myself athletically whenever I choose, without needing some team or event to organize my energies. And if I’m feeling uninspired by my local climbs, I can always set something new on the MoonBoard or hike around the hills, find a line, and bolt a project of my own.
This DIY spirit has traditionally been at the heart of our sport. When John Salathé and Yvon Chouinard found that soft-iron pitons didn’t work well in Yosemite’s dense granite, they forged their own steel pins; when Ray Jardine wanted to push the difficulty of free climbing, he developed Friends to protect parallel-sided cracks; when Wolfgang Güllich needed to train power to send Action Directe, he invented the campus board; when Thomas Huber wanted to make sure he was training his right and left side in the same way, he devised the mirrored system wall that is foundational to board climbing today; and when Daniel Woods, Giuliano Cameroni, and Shawn Raboutou felt like their core video content was being diluted by climbing brands and their ascents ignored by the climbing media, they started the Mellow YouTube channel to showcase high-end bouldering and sport climbing.
We have always been an independent, fringey lot, and until recently—with the gym boom and films like Free Solo and Dawn Wall popularizing the sport—we often took pride in seeming to stand apart from mainstream society. We definitely did not need to see climbing included in a hyped-up, overblown, commercial production like the Olympics simply to convince us it has value. For most of us—and certainly for me—climbing is an experiential sport, offering its worth in those moments when we’re giving our best efforts in the face of risk, discomfort, and fear. We don’t need Olympic medals to validate a truth we’ve already known for centuries.
And yet, a select few Olympic events have always made for compelling eye candy, sports that married strength, risk, and technical precision: things like gymnastics, figure skating, downhill skiing, the snowboard half-pipe, and—starting in Tokyo in 2021—climbing.
Honestly, Sport Climbing in Tokyo was pretty damned fun to watch, especially when Janja Garnbret came out and dominated, as predicted. But I’ve gotten just as much inspiration watching her blow away the competition in World Cups. And if someone had asked me, “Do you want to, in person, see Janja win gold at the Olympics or onsight two 5.14b’s at Oliana?”, my answer would definitely have been “The latter.” Because, for a climbing nerd like me, there’s much more to learn watching a master crush on rock than watching her cruise up another ephemeral set of plastic blobs.
The Olympics just didn’t seem super necessary, plus the format in Tokyo was weird, forcing slow-twitch lead climbers to ooze up the speed wall, sometimes looking as awkward as newborn foals; and forcing speed specialists to try elite-level boulders and lead climbs, getting spit off risibly low. But even though Speed is no longer part of the combined format in Paris, I’m honestly still having trouble getting the Olympic fever.
I don’t think the Olympics are “ruining the sport.” And I don’t, as some old crusters would have it, believe the Olympics are overflowing the gyms and cliffs with gumby hordes just dying to try this “cool thing” they saw at the Games, ruining everything they touch like toddlers with chocolate-covered hands. (Remember when the fear was that Free Solo would inspire a bunch of noobs to free solo El Capitan and die? As far as I know, there have been zero free soloing deaths on Free Rider since the film came out in 2018.) The cliffs and gyms started getting noticeably busier well before the Olympics, like back in 2010, so that horse already left the barn.
And yet I don’t think the Olympics are doing much to improve the sport either. Sure, they may help the overall rise in difficulty standards, providing a platform and perhaps better resources to help the athletes train. But on the flip side, might Ondra have climbed 5.16a by now if he hadn’t sunk all that time and energy, during his athletic prime, into prepping for Tokyo?
That’s the problem with flat-out stating that “having climbing in the Olympics sucks.” I’ve been climbing long enough—37 years, i.e., the age of two Olympic competitors combined—to realize that most climbers are so self-focused, insecure, and emotionally unintelligent that when we say something “sucks,” it’s because we aren’t good enough to climb it, or we’re scared to try it, or other climbers who somehow “don’t belong” are doing it, or it’s not in our chosen discipline, which is of course the only real discipline.
So sure, I can rattle off a few quick reasons why the Olympics might, in fact, “suck”: mainstream media hype is misrepresenting climbing to the world; the commercialism of our precious pursuit somehow threatens its very preciousness; competing is antithetical to the sport’s independent, iconoclastic spirit; blah-blah-blah. But the honest subtext would be that—like many of us who are rock climbers first and foremost—I’m mostly indifferent to competition climbing, including the Olympics, and its ever-rotating cast of unencumbered young athletes who have the time to train five days a week, and few “real life” obligations beyond stretching a bit and updating their Instagram on rest days. And perhaps, as an aging C-List climber, I’m more than a little threatened by just how fucking strong these athletes are, because, like most climbers, I struggle to imagine people climbing things beyond my limit, even if I know intellectually that I’m well off the world standard.
My buddy Ted and I recently had a chance to watch the American Olympian Brooke Raboutou training at a Colorado gym. She was doing doubles on the massive lead wall (50 feet of vert, though longer because it’s overhanging), hiking back-to-back 5.14a and 5.13+ pitches. It was beyond impressive, and watching her, it was no surprise to me that—like so many of the World Cup and Olympic competitors—she has also put her skill and training to good use on rock. (In 2023 she made quick work of Daniel Woods’s powerful V15 Box Therapy in Wild Basin, Colorado.) Then there’s Jesse Grupper, an American Olympian who has flashed two 5.14c’s outside and can do disgustingly difficult things on the Tension Board 2, like go up a V11, down a V6, then up a V10 as part of his power-endurance training. This really is the new level, and in that sense, if Olympic medals are inspiring our best climbers to push even harder and in turn push the sport, then it’s hard to see much harm. Plus, seeing how diligently these folks train should give you some idea of just how difficult the World Cup and Olympic routes are, which only further highlights the competitors’ commitment, skill, and athleticism, making the Games that much funner to watch.
But in the end, if we boil down climbing to athleticism only—and, as a result, fetishize training and hangboard feats and grades and “medals” and “wins,” as is trendy—then we miss out on the many other things climbing has to offer. We ignore its roots in the mountains and the centuries of dramatic, frequently tragic history that have emerged from that; we ignore its lore and culture and connection to place; we ignore its broader community, which is so much larger than the elite circle formed in training centers and gyms, and that is now gathered in the Olympic Village in Paris.
The day before I wrote this, my friend Brandon and I put in a 13-hour day at the crags, spending the morning figuring out beta on projects and the afternoon bolting and cleaning two new climbs. When I got home, I was so sore, keyed up, and dehydrated from exertion that I didn’t fall asleep till 2 a.m., but it was worth it. As dusk had settled over the narrow, forested gulch, submerging the ponderosa in gathering pools of inky shadow, we took turns leading our new five-bolt 5.10. The route was far from cutting edge, but that hardly mattered to us: It had fun, kinesthetically pleasing cranks between gneissic horns and sculpted pockets, ending in a bulge with a hero rail. Leading the route in the gloaming as the stream burbled below was the perfect capstone to the day.
Neither of us “won gold,” nor would we have while climbing at such a modest standard, but it was a pure and profound experience, one untethered from the fanfare and external validation that can adhere to competition climbing. It’s reassuring that, even in 2024, with 600-plus rock gyms in North America catering to millions of climbers, and with the competition, training, and Olympics hype machine pumping out content, you can still have these sorts of “old-school” experiences. You just have to work for them, same as ever, even as the crowds swell at popular areas. To me, climbing feels far from ruined.
So, by all means, watch and enjoy the Olympics. Take inspiration from these amazing athletes. Just don’t lose sight of what you want from climbing, because, in the end, it’s really the only thing you have.
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