5.73 by Narasaki in Speed

Tomoa Narasaki reports on Insta that he has set a new PB in Speed with 5.73 (video) and that his goal for the Olympics is 5.5. This is just totally remarkable and strengthens Narasaki's chances of getting the gold in Tokyo. Bassa Mawem, with 5.58, is the only Olympian that has a better PB and Tomoa is now more than 10% faster than all the non "Speed-specialist". If he wins the Speed qualification, most probably none of the specialists will make it to the Top-8 final. Then, the Japanese will most likely win Speed in the final, meaning that it is probably good enough for him to be at least #2 in either Lead or Boulder to win the gold.

The 5.73 also confirms this article from 2018: The Speed experts were dead wrong. In different articles from 2015, three Speed medalists have claimed that it would be very hard to get below seven seconds. "To get below 7 seconds in Tokyo 2020 you need to focus half of your training on Speed as well as gaining some weight in the whole body." The first time Narasaki got below 7 seconds was after having trained it for three sessions.

As a side note, the 5.73 also put questions marks on the Speed scene. OK, Reza Alipourshenazandifar has the world record with 5.48 and unofficially, Qixin Zhong has done 5.35 when he won the China Nationals. However, getting below 6 seconds often means you will get a medal and these guys train Speed 24/7. At the same time, there might be just 30 males who train Speed as a full-time sport, and possibly only ten who have done this during the full last five years.

It just might be that if the best competition climbers took a break and only focused on Speed, as the speciality, they would have taken over the scene pushing the world record close to five seconds in a couple of years.