The big dilemma for the Lead route setters is that the audience, especially the non-climbers, want to see Tops. For climbers who top, however, ranking is decided by who climbed faster. From a fairness perspective, it is good that there will be no spectators at the venue, meaning that the climbers waiting will hopefully not know if the route was topped. In any case, most probably some Olympians will climb faster than normal as also ties earlier on the route will be ranked based on who reached the scoring fastest.

I have asked the chief route setter, Adam Pustelnik, if they have gotten any instructions from IFSC for how to deal with the “Tops/Ties” dilemma. Adam said, logically, that he cannot comment on internal matters.

“I would say that we’ve already had combined competitions and we’ve experienced how it works, but from the route setting I would just repeat it’s not like 1+1. You can never know what will happen and it’s the athletes who are the key players here. They perform and showcase our sport. We try to prepare the stage for them the best we can. In general in Lead, we always try to have a good split between the competitors. As the nature of the job is that it’s hardly predictable, it’s not always that we arrive with such. But we always try our best.”

It should be mentioned that in the Combined Championships, the Olympic selection was often decided by who climbed fastest to the top.

Great 36 min interview with Adam Ondra where he says Tomoa Narasaki is the favourite to win as he says he has no talent for Speed Climbing. Interestingly, Adam also says that he will not do any competition for a year after the Olympics as he has sacrificed so much only been training and being programmed for Tokyo for over two years.

The multiplication format creates dramatic preconditions for Climbing in the Olympics. After only some 30 minutes of the first qualification day, it will pretty much be decided who among the Speed specialists will be #4 or #5 in the final. Such an overall score, you will mathematically get by multiplying 1*20*20 in the qualification and 1*8*8. In theory, Tomoa Narasaki could beat all Speed specialists and if so, he will most certainly also win Speed in the final, creating a crucial advantage over Adam Ondra & Co.

It is expected that most Olympians will play it rather safe in the first Speed run as a false start means you are disqualified from doing a second run. On the other hand, especially the Speed specialists starting last will probably partly base their strategy on what is needed to be #1. directly from the first race.

When it comes to Bouldering, the starting order is probably set up by the reversed order to the qualification seeding, i.e. Narasaki and Janja Garnbret will start last. This is normally a disadvantage as the friction will deteriorate due to the chalk etc. Viktoria Meshkova starts #2 which is an advantage. Among the males, Colin Duffy starts as #3 and Adam Ondra as #10.

The biggest chance for an outsider to make good results occurs in bouldering. Sometimes the route setting benefits certain athletes and there is a bigger element of luck in bouldering compared to Speed and Lead. In the final, there will be only three boulders and thus many will score the same number of tops.

Finally, the uncertainties of the athletes' current shape must be mentioned. Almost all of the 40 Olympians have just done a limited number of comps, or none at all, in 2021. It would be sensational if any of these would take a medal as just training is not ideal preparation.

The biggest chances of creating a surprise are; Great Speed progress by Ondra, Coxey back in great shape in Bouldering, YueFei Pan progress in all three disciplines and of course any of the lower-ranked having focused on Speed challenging the specialists.

During the last five days before the competition starts, the Olympians are allowed some practising in all disciplines. In Lead, there are four training routes and for three days the athletes have two tries with a six-minute time limit until Saturday. Then the routes are taken down.

Every day until Monday, the climbers have also some time slots to try the Speed wall and some set boulders. It should be mentioned that several athletes, including the Russian except Rubtsov, have chosen to fly in just two days prior to the comp.

Interestingly is also that team USA brought a mobile wall which they have set up inside their Olympic village. With kind of limited climbing training during the last days, this could be an advantage for the athletes used to climb for several hours a day, also few days prior to a comp.

Janja Garnbret was 2 - 2 - 3 in her three first Lead World Cups at age 16 in 2015. Since then she has won most of the comps she has entered in Lead and Bouldering. In Speed her PB is 7.92 which is best among all the non-Speed specialists. (c) Daniel Gajda/IFSC

Most probably the 22-year-old Slovenian will score 2 * 1 * 1 = 2. It will be sensational if her multiplied score is 10 or more. Her biggest risk would be doing a false start or slip in the first final race in Speed meaning her best result will be #5.

In bouldering anything can happen but even so, only an injury could put her outside the Top-3. In Lead, there are always a risk standing on a bolt or forgetting a clip etc and that would be her only risk not being Top-3.

In other words, she could score 5 * 3 * 3 = 45 points but then we are talking a mental break down due to some very bad luck in the qualification. What strongly talks against this is that it seems she has handled defeats great before. She just loves climbing and the challenging it creates and are happy even if she does not top out.

In reality, the only way Janja will only be runner-up is probably some bad luck in combination with Chaehyon Seo does her best Bouldering and Speed of her life. In Lead, she won over Janja four times out of six in 2019 when the Korean was 15-years-old.

Adam Pustelnik from Poland is the chief-route Lead setter in Tokyo. In his team he also has; Jan Zbranek (CZE), Hiroshi Okano (JPN) and Akito Matsushima (JPN), which have worked together both in Innsbruck this year and in the World Champion in 2019. There are also a couple of Japanese setters helping out with the training routes etc. (c) Daniel Gajda/IFSC

"We’ve had four days of setting before the opening ceremony and then we were working three more days during the 3x3 basketball games but that included preparing routes for the training sessions. To explain a bit more, for the main competition we set 4 routes in total - a qually and a final route for men and women. In addition, we prepared 4 routes for training sessions for the athletes on the FOP that means on the actual wall of the competition. Since yesterday they have had sessions of around 2hours to try out boulders, these routes and climb on the speed wall as a form of training on the main wall.

For the question on challenges, I would say that the job we’re doing does not really differ much from other competition. It’s always challenging to prepare things that will be attractive to see, showcase the best of climbing and give a good score. Of course, there’s a much bigger stake in this competition but this does not change the way we work as we always try to do our job the best we can. The difference is more about the combined format and a mix of climbers in the rounds but again we’ve already experienced that and tried our best for preparing the routes."

How the first day of training? Was it like a competition simulation?
No definitely not! Just used it as a chance to feel the wall angles, super nice for the slabs especially to see what you can stand on on them and how you climb on it. Speed wall knowing the texture is super nice. And on lead knowing how the clips feel and all that. Like in Briancon the clips themselves are really tight so kind of hard to clip, so knowing all that before you compete makes it less stressful.

“I arrived on Saturday July 27th. I came here alone, our team will arrive on August 1st. Training at the climbing wall began on July 29 and will continue until the start of the competition. There are 2 bouldering walls: one in the warm-up area and one in the competition area. On the lead wall 4 routes have been prepared. The speed wall is 10 and 15 meters. All this is available in the evening 2 hours a day, separately guys and girls on a schedule. A fitness room is available in the village 24 hours a day. You can also just exercise outside on the grass, stretch, or whatever. Many athletes running or cycling / skateboarding around the village. I generally like the village :)

Mostly I walk around the village and ride a skateboard :) I like the atmosphere and a huge number of the best athletes from all over the world around. I'm just enjoying this. I plan another 1-2 trainings at the climbing wall and every day I go to fitness on the territory of the village.