Competitions in the sport of climbing, governed by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), have been held at two editions of the Summer Olympic Games. First selected as one of the discretionary sports at the 2020 and 2024 games, sport climbing will be inducted as one of the mandatory sports at the 2028 games. Athletes compete in the disciplines of bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing. All three were contested as a single event in the 2020 programme, while speed climbing was spun off into its own event in the 2024 programme. Slovenia have won the most gold medals (2), while Austria, Japan, and the United States have won the most medals overall (3 each).
The inclusion was proposed by the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) in 2015.[1] In September 2015, competition climbing was included in a shortlist along with baseball, softball, skateboarding, surfing, and karate to be considered for inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics;[2] and in June 2016, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that they would support the proposal to include all of the shortlisted sports in the 2020 Games.[3] Finally, on August 3, 2016, all five sports (counting baseball and softball together as one sport) were approved for inclusion in the 2020 Olympic program.[4]
Members of the IFSC explained that they were only granted one gold medal per gender by the Olympic committee, and they did not want to exclude speed climbing. The IFSC's goal for the 2020 Olympics was primarily to establish climbing and its three disciplines as Olympic sports; changes to the format could follow later. This tactic proved to be successful as they were granted a second set of medals for the 2024 Summer Olympics, where speed climbing will be a separate event from the combined event of lead climbing and bouldering.[6][7][8]
The difficulty of the lead climb is the same for men and women with the route set within a narrow grade range. The difficulty of the four boulder problems are in a wider range of difficulty with the women's problems being within a slightly easier grade range than the men's.
NB: The sources give lead grades in UK Tech and boulder grades in V-Grades.[9][10] For lead grades, French, American, UIAA, UK Trad, Eubank, and South African have been converted from UK Tech using the following tables.[11][12] For boulder grades, Fb-Grades have been converted from V-Grades using the following table.[12]
The following nations have taken part in the Olympic climbing competition. The numbers in the table indicate the number of competitors sent to that year's Olympics.
Spain (1)
Slovenia (1)
Poland (1)
Australia
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Belgium.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada_(Pantone).svg.png){kind=small}
Canada
China
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Indonesia
Iran
Italy
Japan
Kazakhstan
New Zealand
ROC
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Switzerland
Ukraine
United States
Spain
United States
Austria
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Great Britain
Japan
Indonesia
China
Slovenia
Poland
