Overview

Australia has two representatives in Sport Climbing at Paris 2024 – Oceania Mackenzie and Campbell Harrison – who will compete in the women’s and men’s Bouldering and Lead competitions.

Oceania is poised to achieve her best Olympic result after a stunning rise through the world rankings. The only Australian woman to have competed in Sport Climbing at the Olympics, Oceania is Australia’s top-ranked female climber.

The Melbourne-based climber, who finished 13th in Speed, 12th in Bouldering, and 16th in Lead at the Tokyo Games, has continued to climb the world rankings since 2021. Last year, she finished seventh at the World Championships – the best-ever result by an Australian – and became the first Aussie climber to reach a World Cup Final, where she finished fifth.

Campbell, a first-time Olympian, has consistently placed in the world top 40 in Lead and Bouldering and has reached multiple World Cup event semi-finals.

Ones to Watch

Spanish star Alberto Gines Lopez, the defending Olympic champion, headlines a world-class men’s field that includes the likes of Japanese teenager Sorato Anraku – the top-ranked athlete in Lead and Boulder – Austria’s Jakob Schubert, a six-time world champion and bronze medallist at the Tokyo Games, and American Samuel Watson, who set a new men’s Speed Climbing world record of just 4.79 seconds in April this year.

In the women’s events, all eyes will be on Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret, the reigning Olympic champion and eight-time world champion, while Poland’s Aleksandra Miroslaw set the women’s Speed Climbing world record at the final in the Tokyo Games and has lowered that mark seven times since.

Sport Format

Sport Climbing features three formats – Boulder, Speed and Lead.

In Bouldering, competitors climb four different routes - or problems - with the aim to get to the top of as many as possible in as few attempts as possible. Each route is separated into three zones with an athlete having to hold onto a zone with both hands to pick up points.

In the Lead competition, competitors climb as high as they can on a wall over 15m high in six minutes without having seen the route ahead of time. The climber must clip their rope into each quickdraw with the aim to reach the highest hold possible on the wall.

Speed is a race against the clock in one-on-one elimination. Two climbers scale a standardised 15m route at a five-degree incline in a head-to-head race.

In a change from the Tokyo Games, where the scores from all three disciplines were combined to determine an overall Olympic champion, in Paris there will be two separate competitions - a combined Bouldering and Lead competition and an individual Speed event.

Competition Schedule

Sport Climbing runs from 5-10 August 2024 at the specially built Le Bourget Climbing Venue. The women’s Speed finals are on Wednesday, 7 August, with the men’s Speed finals on Thursday, 8 August. The men’s Boulder and Lead finals are on Friday, 9 August, with the women’s finals on Saturday, 10 August.

Fun Facts

• The best athletes scale a 15m high and five-degree inclined wall in under six seconds for men and under seven seconds for women.
• The climbing competition will take place at the Le Bourget Sport Climbing Venue in Le Bourget, one of only two new permanent venues built specifically for the Games, along with the aquatic centre.