UKH

The winners of the Olympics 100m sprint can lay claim to being the world's fastest man and woman.

Will the winners of the Olympics climbing medals be able to legitimately claim to the world's best female and male climbers?

I think the similarity is more that  a 100m sprinter can't claim to be the best runner... and the best boulderer can't claim to be the best climber... however they might claim to be the strongest climber. 

No, they can claim to be the best Competition Climber at the Olympics.
In the same way that Bolt can claim to be the best 100m runner, but can't claim to be the best runner.

not necessarily, a runner may put a world record time in at the world championships and then loose at the olympics.

A better example would be football, golf, cycling etc. none of these sports are at their pinnacle in the Olympics (football has word cup, golf has the masters, cycling has the tour du france). 

the general public may assume that the winner of the olympics is the "best" climber but people who know the sport properly will have a much better yardstick to measure best climber. 

As long as they also won the 200m. Otherwise there could be a debate......

No, they can claim to be the best overall olympic format competition climber. We are still left with the tantalising prospect of comparing this to trad / boulder / event specialist / ice / etc etc

Maybe... depends on if Ondra wins or not

Ahem, De Ronde.

This is what I was hoping for. Yes, there will be olympic climbing, but the prestige of other climbing competitions will be equal/greater.

But it is not going to happen. Because all athletes who have a shot of winning the olympics have openly stated that the olympics is their priority and they are willing to sacrifice two years of climbing for it, olympic climbing will be by far the most important climbing competition.

Sounds like a pretty resounding "no" from almost everyone.

I wonder if the answer changes if the winner were to (miraculously) win all 3 catagories.

I'm thinking the likes of Michael Phelps winning so many swimming medals must have been crowned "world's greatest swimmer" by many based on Olympic results.

And on a different note, I'll eat my hat if the reporting in the general (and probably climbing too) media doesn't refer to the winners as "best (fe)male climber in the world"

Yeah, but what's he ever done in brine (etc. etc.)?

If the format lasts then it will probably develop a distinct name e.g. Combined Competition Climbing. If so there would be no problem saying that the winner is the best Combined Competition Climber (assuming the Olympics becomes the preeminent event).

This is exactly the same as how Nafissatu Thiam is the best Heptathlete, and would have a good claim to be the best generalist track-and-field athlete, but only a tentative claim to be the best track-and-field athlete.

The closest (non Olympic) parallel that I can draw is with 3 Day Eventing. This format brings together several rather unrelated disciplines to try to identify the best generalist. Most casual horse-riders probably don't do all 3, and indeed the vast majority probably never compete at all.

In the combined final Tomao placed:

Speed: 2nd

Boulder: 1st

Lead: 2nd

So maybe someone winning all three is not so unlikely.

No they can't, the world record holder for the fastest sprint is only the fastest against other people who have had their times recorded. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there isn't someone who has never heard of the Olympics or even competitive running but is actually faster whilst chasing his breakfast across some savanna. 

I suspect you are very, very wrong here, talent and necessity will only get you so far. Probably not within half a second of a Bolt at his best.

It makes sense for them though as an Olympic gold is financially very lucrative I would have thought. 

Could be, depends a bit on their sponsorship deals, which are probably written with olympic PR in mind.

But money involved in climbing is still a very small amount. With the obvious time investments, perseverance and intelligence required to be a pro-climber, they can all make more money in business.

For the women the event got us Janja #1, Akio #2 and Shauna #3.   I don;t think I'd argue with that as a ranking of 'best female climber'.

I agree with you at this current point in time. But successful Olympians (like dame Kelly Holmes and brown lee brothers) are pretty much set for life from main stream sponsors a la Aldi etc, Gongs and what not. Will be interesting to see if investment into infrastructure like training camps, nutrition etc will change if they are successful.  Will be interesting to see how it all changes after 2020. 

Wonder if China will start genetically modifying children etc to win - modern spider man/woman ? 

Just wait until the male gymnasts get a go at speed climbing and bouldering..........explosive power, hand eye coordination, agility.........

Finger strength? 

Probably. Open-hand strength they'll already have in spades -- I imagine -- and I can't imagine that they'll struggle to develop what crimp or pinch strength they might lack.

Their only true disadvantage will be experience, reading routes and solving problems. For speed, this is obviously irrelevant. For lead and bouldering, it could be decisive.

Finger and hand strength takes longer to develop than anything else. I disagree re open hand strength as they don’t use anything approaching a sloper. 

Ever tried tumbling, the vault or the pommel horse? 

All 'pushing' events, not pulling. They'd be good at the Quarryman though.

go read www.Johngill.net .  It wouldn't surprise me if bouldering is being used by gymnasts already as a general conditioning tool.

All of these appear to involve pushing not pulling, and I'm curious as to what extent, if any, these activities would transfer to hanging slopers.

Quite well. Body tension and control play a large part in hanging (and pulling on) slopers.....

Oddly enough, motorbike racers are often decent climbers. Not comp standard, but they have good core and hand / finger strength, and claim that climbing helps to prevent arm pump, which is a serious problem for bike racers.

Ok, high bar, asymmetric bars.

swinging about on jugs!

I'd question your basic assumption.

Firstly the winner of the Olympics 100 m sprint would be the worlds fastest man in the final over 100 m. They could of course have been slower than someone who clocked a faster time in qualifying and then under performed in the final.

Secondly as runners hit their peak speed between 30 - 70 m it is possible that long jump or triple jump athletes are achieving higher maximum speeds than the 100 m runners.

Thirdly people not running probably are faster. I estimate a diver gets up to about 35 mph before they hit the water compared to 28 mph for the 100 m.

Tell you what - I'll get some of the climber from the local wall to go to the gymnastics club along the road, and then get some gymnasts to go to the climbing wall, and we'll see who gets on best........

very true. Will no doubt have happened

No. Whilst the jumpers are all superb sprinters (see carl Lewis especially), they are only sprinting for 40 - 50 m maximum. They also need to be in control at take off, and their max speed is significantly less than that of a pure sprinter.

If you are going to expand beyond running, i put it to you that the fastest person at an olympics is (depending on the course) a downhill skier. Even faster than the bobsled types.

I occasionally work with one, who has moved into business leadership in a completely non-sport-related sphere. I would say he got the job 80% because of his gold medal, as it involves a lot of PR and pressing of flesh etc. Very marketable, a gold medal. Seems competent as far as I can tell

I wouldn't class the Olympics as the ultimate for deciding who is the number 1 climber. everyone knows ondra is the best. its about the outdoors,not coloured plastic holds under the guidance of the ioc

What you say is true but I was really referring to how people talk about and perceive these things in conversation/newspapers/etc. If we are going to get very literal about it we can start saying that Olympians are all pretty slow compared to base jumpers or that guy who jumped out of a balloon that was essentially in space or fighter pilots or anyone on the ISS, etc etc. 

I’m with you on this one...

My nephew is a keen gymnast who just got into bouldering...has got very good very quickly...Admittedly he hasn’t got great footwork.

I'm sure this is how the average UKCer thinks today but I'd be very interested to see if that sort of view is retained in the future or if comp climbing comes to be seen as the measure of climbing greatness, not outdoors climbing.

Everyone knows that Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson are the best climbers in the world.

or is it

Everyone knows that Alex Honnold is the best climber in the world.

or is it

Everyone knows that Alain Robert is the best climber in the world.

or is it

Everyone knows that Alex Megos is the best climber in the world.

Horses for courses innit.

A reasonable comparison might be whether anyone considers the Olympic champion cycling round an indoor track to be the world's best cyclist.

Are there any other sports or activities with a sanitised indoor competition version featuring in the Olympics to compare with?

I don't think the fact that it's indoors is relevant - many climbing comps are actually outdoors. What's relevant is that the competition is on a man-made imitation or adaptation of the kind of challenge found in nature.

As such there are many sports with varying degrees of similarity, perhaps the closest being white water kayaking, but you could also argue cases for ski jump, half-pipe events, 3000m steeplechase, mountain biking and I'm sure many more.

Does this occur for tennis, gymnastics and figure skating?

Yes, of course, I should have said man-made, not indoors in UK-centric sort of way.

And is the Olympic champion considered the best at those? Or just different?

I wouldn't know but my guess is that in general they'd certainly be considered one of the best, with the added kudos of having been able to put in a top performance when in mattered. Most of my examples don't seem so far removed from their source event that the Olympic version is no longer at least a reasonable guide to relative talent.

More generally, and mainly in response to your cycling example, a lot of sports have quite widely varying disciplines so there isn't much point in pretending there ever could be a 'best cyclist' or a 'best runner', nor indeed a 'best climber', although the combined climbing format is probably about as close an approximation to that as we're likely to see (for small rock events at least!)

Here's a related hypothetical question: Imagine that running had never before featured in the Olympic games, but that there were long established track and road races in all distances, hurdles, etc. If a single running medal were to be awarded for each sex, how would or should those 'best runners' be decided?

I would argue it would be impossible because sprinting and marathon running are so utterly different. In fact I would argue the same is true of climbing if all three disciplines are considered equally. Actually I think it could be done with climbing by just having lead climbing, because speed is an irrelevant joke and bouldering is merely a subsport

Edit: I am assuming we are only talking about onsight climbing with the restriction of only being able to test it on man made walls.

Impossible isn't a valid answer

You have one running medal to award - which event(s) are you going to award it for?

I would agree with you that single-pitch leading has been the dominant rock climbing discipline in our lifetime, certainly in the western world, although bouldering seems now to be similarly popular if not more so. As such, I think most UK climbers would see the top lead climber as being objectively the best, but the way the combined event is structured it seems it doesn't lead to much different outcomes than if it were just lead. And the potential for splitting the disciplines once they're already there must surely be greater than adding additional new ones that have never been included before.

Ok 1500m then since it requires both speed and endurance, a bit like a 30m sport climb requires both power and endurance. 

Which would not be the case were it just lead and speed (which it seems the IOC insisted on including), so maybe the function of bouldering is, fortuitously, to ensure the best actual climber wins.

And the potential for splitting the disciplines once they're already there must surely be greater than adding additional new ones that have never been included before.

Yes, I think we all hope there will eventually be individual events. Then, hopefully, interest in speed will fade and the speed walls can be put to better training use.

which of course would mean that arguably the two most accomplished male runners of all time - Bolt and Kipchoge - wouldn't even be in the running (pun intended!) for Olympic gold.

I agree with the desire to see individual events. But as for repurposing speed walls, how many such walls are there around the country - can't be more than a handful? The gain to non-speed climbers would be quite marginal and some climbers would be denied the opportunity to practice a part of our sport that maybe you don't like but others certainly do. Seems a bit petty and mean to me.

The Olympic running format... 100m placing x 800m placing x 10k placing.

Yes, it just doesn't work with running. But I would argue it does work with climbing; I think what makes lead climbing such a fascinating discipline and so complex to train for is the almost unique combination of all out strength and power combined with incredible endurance necessary to be a world beater.

I was being a little bit tongue in cheek, but nobody seemed interested in speed climbing before its incorporation into the Olympics and it will be interesting to see whether interest amongst the kids at Ratho is maintained if the Olympic disciplines are separated. And I have always thought that the Ratho speed wall with its uniform angle would make a really good sort of route length systems board!

Dont you mean nobody in the UK seemed interested. That would be a reasonable statement. But the UK seemed almost uniquely disinterested.......it has never (so far....) had the worldwide coverage if lead, but it has had a well supported world cup for many many years. And not just a start list of east europeans.

I think Mo Farah might have excelled at that format! The sprinters would have struggled like the speed climbers seem to.

Yes, that is what I meant.

Och, a bit of EPO and they’ll do just fine.

I think speed would be more acceptable if it was a new route for each event but at a known grade (even if that grade was ridiculously low compared to the lead part).

So for qualifying it would be onsight, and subsequent rounds would be your second, third, etc go on it.

Would be a better test than the fixed "muscle memory" route we currently have.

Would be slightly closer to what we might regard as normal climbing.

In a word. No!

I don't personally like Speed Climbing as I think like many that it is a complete and utter farce.
However, if you do have Speed Climbing, then I believe it has to have rigid rules with regards to things like Route, etc.
It has to be repeatable and consistent, so that the blokes with stopwatches can say it's a genuine 'World Record'. Which I assume is why Speed is included in the Olympics as records are ultimately what people refer to when it comes down to sporting performance.