[Wellsy]

The pinnacle of climbing is an individual thing, and dependent on what you get from it, I don't think on climbing as a "sport" per se. It can be a sport.

Anyway the pinnacle is Burden of Dreams and this is just an entertaining sideshow.

[SA Chris]

I know they are historic inclusions, but there always seems to be a lot of medals for some events like cycling (Keirin??) and a crazy amount of options in swimming (37 events!), hopefully climbing will eventually expand to 1 medal each for the 3 disciplines, plus  "worked" problems and routes that they can all have a go at doing over the 2 weeks of the olympics

[Will Hunt]

I've enjoyed it all immensely. Except the speed obvs.

Having all the boulders going on at once will inevitably lead to arse-ache when you don't see someone top something as the camera was elsewhere. But they've a lot of climbers to get through and it contrasts well to the bouldering format I've seen before where you have to spend 5 mins watching someone not even get off the floor on a balancey slab.
I find the lead very watchable. There's always someone climbing and good tension wondering how far they'll get. Some of the shots showing the size and steepness of the wall in profile have been fantastic.

Ondra fist pumping after losing the speed semi - ostensibly because he got a PB. I think we all know he was also celebrating that fact that he would never ever have to clip into a speed wall again.

Agree completely with what Joel said a couple of pages ago:

I don't think there is any particular problem with the multiplication per se.

The main issue is that it gives equal weighting to the speed as to the boulder and lead, which is something that people on here don't really like.

People would be happy enough to see a 1st place boulderer, 20th speed, 20th lead go through to the finals, but not someone who comes 1st speed, 20th boulder, 20th lead.

It's fine to favour somebody who wins a discipline, because you'd hope to see the medals go to those who'd beaten everyone else in one discipline or another. The problem comes when one of the events has no bearing on how good somebody is at climbing. A better contest would be to have a sealed, air-conditioned room: the temperature maintained at an even 4 degrees centigrade; a relative humidity of 40%; electric fans providing constant air circulation. Competitors would enter and walk to a large sandstone boulder in the centre of the room and take turns to climb on the boulder. A panel of judges would circulate, marking each competitor on how convincingly they could complain about the conditions and heckle the other climbers. Bonus awarded to whoever shows up with the best delicacy from the patisserie.

As someone else said, Miroslaw making the final is the last straw. Such a shame to see the likes of Meshkova, who I thought did very well indeed, get knocked out. The vast majority of other competitors flashed to the zone hold on problem 1. Miroslaw didn't even get there in 5 minutes. There will be 12 minutes of dead air watching her completely fail to make any headway.

What's really surprised me is that the conditions haven't really fouled things up. I'd expected people to be greasing off everything but, bar a few disappointing moments in lead and bouldering, it doesn't seem to have happened. I can't imagine how minging the holds must be if you're last out.

I quite like the internationalness of it. I found myself really rooting for Sterkenberg. She had, at least, not snuck in by just being disproportionately good at speed "climbing".

[spidermonkey09]

Could be a costly punt off the flash go there from Ondra

[Bradders]

Could be a costly punt off the flash go there from Ondra

Was gonna say the exact same thing!

[JackAus]

For anyone who wants better commentary, Ben Cossey is doing instagram live commentary right now.

https://www.instagram.com/benjaminpatchycossey/

[Will Hunt]

Looks like this is going to come down to number of attempts 

[spidermonkey09]

Maybe not so costly. Looked a bit fish out of water there.

[James Malloch]

That’s got to hurt for Ondra!

[cheque]

He didn’t even “find the zone”! 

[galpinos]

Nathaniel Coleman look so psyched/happy trying that problem 2. Great to see him top it too!

[Ru]

Trying to watch this on my phone between hearings in the tax tribunal. Did I just Tomoa and Adam both fail to bonus in the run and jump problem?

[Will Hunt]

Trying to watch this on my phone between hearings in the tax tribunal. Did I just Tomoa and Adam both fail to bonus in the run and jump problem?

Tomoa did get the zone.

[James Malloch]

In the past I’ve used the term “upside down undercut”. Nice to hear the same terminology used in the olympics!

[Will Hunt]

"They've got fingers as strong as legs!"

[cheque]

More non-climber feedback from my boss who paid for Eurosport because he loves watching weird Olympic sports like fencing and sailing.

Speed climbing- “a right laugh, they’re like chimpanzees!”

Bouldering- “goes on for ages and it’s all falling off and brushing then sometimes they randomly climb to the top”

Lead- “It’s quite a thing”

I think he was being polite about lead as I said it was the closest one to what I do.

[User deactivated.]

Looks like connies could be a factor on this 3rd boulder.

I bet Aidan could do it though.

[spidermonkey09]

Looks like they're all using a whack sequence to my untrained eye. Ondra the only one to stick that move and had nowhere to go even when he held it.

[Nutty]

The graphics that keep popping up suggest the move is to skip the hold everyone's gone to and to go for the next handhold to the left. Not the commentators have picked up on that!

[Plattsy]

Keep thinking that horizontal pinch on B3 wants undercutting at some point.

[Wellsy]

Quite a tight top four and Alberto Gines Lopez is good on the lead, right? He's probably got a solid chance of the podium, unexpected there.

[GraemeA]

Quite a tight top four and Alberto Gines Lopez is good on the lead, right? He's probably got a solid chance of the podium, unexpected there.

He has a very good chance of gold

[Wellsy]

Quite a tight top four and Alberto Gines Lopez is good on the lead, right? He's probably got a solid chance of the podium, unexpected there.

He has a very good chance of gold

He must be absolutely buzzing tbh

[RobK]

If Ondra wins lead, Duffy/Schubert come 2nd/3rd and Gines-Lopez comes 4th, then Ondra would get gold.......IT COULD STILL HAPPEN FOLKS.

[joel182]

Absolutely amazing that Tomoa missing the Tomoa skip in the final round of the Speed might cost him the gold