4 February 2016

The Olympic format - The qualifications might be the biggest shame!

It seems quite likely that Climbing will actually make it to the Olympics 2020. This is of course very good news and IFSC should get full credit for making it happen. The IFSC plan is to let 30 + 30 athletes compete in Lead, Speed and Bouldering during four days. Three medals would be awarded to the best male and female competitors with the best combined score. Detailed info starts on page 40 of this document. The suggested qualifying quota is; Top-3 in the World Championship Top-3 in the Youth World Championship Top-9 in the World Ranking Top-3 in five Continental Championships; Africa, Europe, Asia, America and Oceania. In practice all these qualifying events, including the World Cups, must be run with the same four days combined format. Surely, it will be a hype and most of the best will go all in. However, it just might be that several who are not willing to sacrifice full season for a ticket to Tokyo see a great opportunity. Instead they could focus just on one discipline and win the World Championship or World Cup, when the best must have a wider focus. Imagine that maybe none of the guys in the Olympic 2020 will get a discipline medal in the World Championship or even in the overall World Cup 2019? A previous 8a poll shows that most climbers agree with Chris Sharma that this suggested new format is a big shame!
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