UKC

Speed Climbing to be replaced by Slow Climbing at the 2028 Olympics

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Finally! An event I might stand a chance at! 

The Rockfax binary grading system in the other article actually had me for a minute. Slow start here 

Will there be chossy holds?

I do hope events feature trying to remove a nut stuck in a suitably shaped crack, with additional points for the most creative reasons why it can't be retrieved.

T.

Avril Poisson the rising star in France is tipped to win

I’ve been in training for this all my life!

if you want it to be slow then surely they should be placing their own bolts rather than gear 

Sounds about as entertaining as speed climbing. They definitely missed a trick not going down the gladiator route where contestants have to pull one and another off the wall.

Steady on !

Or place any spare deer culling mines on the crash mats

It could be quite entertaining, a play on various running or orienteering training where you repeat the same relatively short loop, but have to do it at the same pace as previously. Those with the smallest time difference between efforts wins. 

Bonus points will be awarded if the Chief Exec of GBClimbing is different by the end of the route from the start of the route.

Here's a bona fide suggestion ( brought to mind by recollection of a cartoon in an 80s climbing mag; "My god! He's using grease!"): instead of chalk, why not a little bag of grease. No need for any new rules or new route design. Give it some thought.

Now if they really want it to be slow they should do Aid climbing, copperheads and skyhooks and drilled pegs, in ice climbing they would have to screw in ice screws on lead and create their own belay at the top, this will be made harder by you having to solve a puzzle at the top using your ice screws to set your belay, there will even be bits of ice that are loose to add challenge, especially if you drill a screw into the loose ice…

I've given it a moment's thought and concluded that nobody would take a dip and just climb with sweaty hands.

I genuinely think that slow climbing would make a good event if you had a hardish route (maybe 8b or something at elite level) and the idea would be to climb it as slowly as possible without actually pumping out and falling off before reaching the top.

The route would obviously have to be very sustained with only the most marginal of shake outs to test the recovery powers of the very best. Maybe you get to climb the route once without falling off first so that you know where you might be able to pause and get something back. There would be great skill in judging things just right. It would make great spectator sport. I think shaking out is a much underestimated skill and it always really annoys me when they silly speed it up in videos. This would put it centre stage.

I’m imagining something like a slow bicycle race where you have to keep moving at least one limb at all times but as slow as possible.. would be some interesting endurance training!

I'm going to go on a different tangent and propose a score category like mountain marathons.  Splatter the comp wall with holds, give them points values for inaccessibility and whoever collects the highest total on the way to the top wins.

(There'll be a time limit of course but the actual key to success will be avoiding terminal rope drag while you weave up down and around trying to tag all the 50 pointers)

Given that climbing is now an Olympic sport (something designed of watched by the couch-bound masses rather than something you 'do') I think it's inevitable that sooner or later merely getting to the top will no longer be the point. It will be all about 'style'. A group of judges drawn from dubious places will award style points based on needlessly dynamic moves (with wow-factor), fetching outfits, constantly maintained rictus like smiles and general posing/prancing around before even getting on the wall. Perhaps even falling-style (e.g., reverse double flip to land into a handstand) will be required for a podium. But it will all still be climbing!

I'm sure those of us of a certain age could propose a strong candidate for selection. 😀

Ah yes, but what about in the men's event?

True. How about having another competitor armed with grease/oil/something filled balloons to lob against the wall to try and impede the current climbers.