Twenty men will compete in the Paris 2024 format
Throughout the start lists for Sport Climbing at Paris 2024 there are a range of ages. In the men’s Speed you have France’s Bassa Mawem at 39 in the same competition as the USA’s Samuel Watson at 18 – but it's not thought about that much. The men’s Boulder & Lead is another story though.
There seems to be more of a focus on the ‘older’ generation vs the ‘new’ generation of climbers, and maybe with good reason. Not a hard and fast rule, but throughout the last few seasons there is either a World Cup medallist in their late 20s/early 30s or in their teens – or at least that’s how it seems.
When you talk about the ‘older’ generation you are really talking about experience and medal counts, and no one fits those criteria more than Austria’s Jakob Schubert. The 33-year-old started his first World Cup in 2007 and since then has gone on to stand on the podium of the World Cup and World Championships 76 times. Just looking at his recent history Schubert won the 2023 Boulder & Lead world title to book his place in Paris to see if he could upgrade his Tokyo 2020 bronze medal. He also won Lead gold at the same championship, won gold at the 2022 European Championships in Boulder & Lead and won Lead gold in Innsbruck at his last World Cup before the Games.
Another climber with just as much experience is Czechia’s Adam Ondra. Ondra and Schubert have been trading blows for title of most World Cup wins in recent times, and the 31-year-old is just like his rival in that he has both Boulder and Lead medals to fall back on. At the European Championships Ondra took home a full set of medals with gold in Lead, silver in Boulder & Lead and bronze in Boulder. After a sixth place at the qualifying World Championships Bern 2023 and fourth in Laval for the European qualifier, Ondra came through the Olympic Qualifier Series (OQS) with two third places.
From one end of the experience spectrum to the other. While Schubert and Ondra were winning medals in 2022 at the European Championships, there were climbers who that year were winning medals at the Youth World Championships – Belgium’s Hannes Van Duysen, Great Britain’s Toby Roberts and Japan’s Anraku Sorato.
Van Duysen won Boulder gold in Dallas, USA at the 2022 Youth Worlds, and then won the first men’s World Cup medal for his nation in Hachioji, Japan at the start of the 2023 season. He also won a Lead gold and Boulder bronze at the 2023 Youth Worlds and won another World Cup medal just before the OQS in Keqiao, China. That led in nicely to the OQS where he was sixth in Shanghai and fourth in Budapest to seal his Paris 2024 spot.
For Roberts, his 2022 Youth Worlds included competing against Anraku where he took a Boulder silver and a Lead silver. He then progressed well into the World Cup circuit with his first senior medal coming the same year in Edinburgh, Great Britain - a bronze in Lead. In 2023 Roberts won World Cup golds in both Boulder and Lead and continued the medal form into 2024 with three more medals, including a Lead win in Wujiang.
Both Roberts and Anraku took the senior stage by storm in their debut year. After two medals at the 2022 Youth Worlds the excitement among the Japanese team was building after a good showing at national level, and he didn’t disappoint the hype. He won gold in the Boulder and the Lead disciplines and went on to win both the series titles in the same year, the first man to ever do so. At the World Championships he narrowly missed out in fourth but came back and won the Asian qualifier to head to Paris.
Just ahead of Anraku in third at the World Championships was teammate Narasaki Tomoa who booked his ticket to Paris. A Boulder and Lead climber, Narasaki has a place in Sport Climbing history with his ‘Tomoa skip’ Speed technique widely adopted in the discipline. That came from competing in Speed for the Tokyo 2020 cycle in which he was fourth at Games time. Narasaki does have a good track record in Boulder & Lead with a gold at the 2022 Continental Championships and at the World Cup Morioka 2022 when the format was used.
Like Anraku, Roberts has a country mate in attendance, and that is Hamish McArthur. In 2021 McArthur won Boulder gold and Lead gold at the Youth Worlds, he also took silver in the combined format. The same year he won a Lead bronze medal at the senior World Championships. McArthur came through the OQS route with a seventh place in Shanghai and a tenth in Budapest.
If you are talking about experience and youth at an Olympic Games, you have to mention Spain’s Alberto Ginés López. Now 21, at Tokyo 2020 Ginés López became his country’s youngest ever gold medallist at the age of 17. At the 2022 European Championships Ginés López took bronze in Boulder & Lead but finished in a lowly 29th at the Games qualifying World Championships 2023. He bounced back from that to narrowly miss out at the Laval qualifier in second, but then finished second in Shanghai and fifth in Budapest at the OQS events to take a tilt at defending his Olympic gold.
A year younger than Ginés López at Tokyo 2020, USA’s Colin Duffy also returns to the Olympic stage after taking silver at the World Championships. Duffy also has Boulder discipline and Lead discipline gold medals at World Cup level, notably with both at the World Cup Innsbruck 2022, the first to ever achieve that feat at the same event. In the run up to Paris 2024 Duffy also got back to the top step of the World Cup podium winning gold in Lead at Chamonix.
Joining Duffy for Team USA is Jesse Grupper. Grupper has won Lead medals at the World Cup’s in Briançon and Edinburgh in 2022 and his route to the Games came via the Pan American Games where he finished top. Grupper has been dealing with a finger injury that restricted his 2024 competition schedule and his only appearance was a 26th in Chamonix Lead.
The two climbers left in the lineup who have Olympic experience are China’s Pan Yufei and Germany’s Alexander Megos.
Pan was 14th at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. He was runner-up to Anraku at the Asian qualifier event so had to come through the OQS and did so with a 13th place in Shanghai and 17th in Budapest.
Megos also got a ticket to Paris via the OQS with a 12th place finish in Shanghai and a seventh in Budapest. Predominantly a Lead climber, Megos’ medals have all come in the discipline including a World Championships 2023 bronze and more recently a silver at the World Cup in Innsbruck.
Megos will be joined by compatriot Yannick Flohe who has World Cup medals in both Boulder and in Lead. His Lead medal was bronze from Koper 2022 and his Boulder success was a gold at Brixen the same year. Flohe finished ninth at the OQS in Shanghai and eighth in Budapest to confirm his ticket.
Three more OQS Paris 2024 ticket recipients were Slovenia’s Luka Potocar, Switzerland’s Sascha Lehmann and South Korea’s Lee Dohyun. Both Potocar and Lehmann have predominantly won in the Lead discipline while Lee has leaned more toward Boulder.
Potocar won silver at the 2022 European continental championships and in the same year won his first World Cup gold at home in Koper, following it up with a silver in Edinburgh – all in Lead. He was 15th in Shanghai and 12th in Budapest for the OQS.
Also in 2022, Lehmann was on the podium at the World Games taking the Lead gold and in 2023 once again stood atop the podium with a World Cup win in Innsbruck. Lehmann finished fifth in Shanghai and a 13th in Budapest was enough for Paris.
For Dohyun, 2023 was his year. He got a full set of medals by taking gold at Boulder World Cup Prague, silver at Boulder World Cup Brixen and a bronze at the World Championships Bern for Boulder. Coming third in the Asian qualifier meant he had to go through the OQS and did so by winning in Shanghai and coming second in Budapest.
There are many photos from Australia’s Campbell Harrison at the Oceania qualifier in Melbourne, and one in particular showed four years of emotion coming to the surface. Reaching the top of the Lead route meant Harrison had won his ticket to Paris 2024, but that was the end of a long road that started at Tokyo 2020 qualification where he stepped away following his sisters breast cancer diagnosis. There will be many smiles when Harrison first takes to the Paris 2024 stage.
Also coming through the continental qualifier route was South Africa’s Mel Janse van Rensburg. Janse van Rensburg’s success has been on the continental level with a gold in both the Boulder and the Lead at the 2021 championships. Third time on the top step also included an Olympic ticket.
Last, and certainly by no means least, are the two French climbers – Sam Avezou and Paul Jenft. With country quotas of two, even for the hosts, one of Avezou, Jenft and Mejdi Schalck was going to miss out when it came to the OQS. Unfortunately for Schalck, it was him.
The three were all close together after the first OQS in Shanghai, but Avezou sealed his spot by winning the Budapest event after an eighth in China. Avezou has also tasted success in both the Boulder and Lead at the World Cup level by winning a Boulder bronze in Innsbruck and Lead silver in Chamonix in the space of two 2023 events. He also has a Boulder silver from the 2022 European Championships.
For Jenft, his path to Paris was secured by a fourth in Shanghai and ninth place finish in Budapest. He too has a World Cup medal to his name from 2023 when he took Boulder bronze in the first event of the season in Hachioji. Jenft is also a 2021 Youth Worlds medallist with silver in Lead and another bronze in Boulder.
Both Jenft and Avezou now have the honour of competing in front of a home crowd and are sure to get some of the biggest cheers of the whole event, and the men’s Boulder & Lead competition is set to be a cracker with so many climbers with form and podium visits to their names.
The men’s Boulder & Lead competition will open Sport Climbing’s second Olympic Games appearance with the first session of Paris 2024 the Boulder round of the semi-final on Monday 5 August.
