UKC

Alberto Ginés López of Spain is the first-ever Olympic champion in Sport Climbing. Silver went to Nathaniel Coleman after a strong Boulder round and consistent performance, and an elusive bronze would ultimately hang around Schubert's neck.

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Brilliant from Schubert on the lead wall. The performance of the day?

A few thoughts.

For climbing to be a success at the Olympics it has to capture the general public's imagination. A sport does this by being easy to quickly grasp what is going on for general viewers- i.e. what each athlete needs to do to beat their competitors, showcasing and rewarding prowess and finally and most crucially creating drama with "Olympic" moments. I feel this first Olympic go for climbing so far has delivered on some of those points but not on others.

On the positive side there was plenty of drama with the podium only decided by the last go of the last competitor in many ways that was the perfect competition. There was also a real epic "Olympic" moment with Schubert's final climb being the only one to top out and taking him from last place to the podium. There have also been other moments where the athletes skills/prowess have been showcased such as Coleman's amazing finish to B2 in the bouldering and the near world record in the women's speed qualifying.

Another positive was both the speed and the lead looked great on tele - and you could tell from the excitement of the non climbing commentator, they were likely to be "got" by the general public.

What has been less successful has been the complexity and lack of logic of the scoring system. Gines Lopez wins the speed by being the 5th (out 8) fastest athlete! Which then sets him up to win the whole event despite not topping a single boulder and coming middle of the pack in lead! The winner should self evidently be the outstanding climber on the day - it really didn't feel like that today to me watching.

Secondly the format of the multiplied rankings made it really hard to follow who needed what to win. The commentators were often struggling to make sense of it. It then led to situations such as Ondra going from Gold to second last when one climber climbed 2 holds higher than him. Not to mention the issues created by leaving an empty slot in the final for the injured climber. I know this happens in athletics with empty lanes but this doesn't materially affect the results. Here it gave Ondra an unfair advantage in the speed and affected the whole scoring situation throughout the competition.

It's exciting to see climbing in the Olympics and I know things are being changed format-wise for Paris so hopefully the confusing bits can be ironed out. At the moment I'd give climbing a bronze but the women's event is still to come tomorrow so maybe the show can move up the podium.  I'm sure there will be plenty more drama and Olympic moments.

Sorry just seen there is a whole long thread discussing all these points. At least I'm not alone in having such mixed feelings about it all.

Spot on, couldn’t agree more. It certainly makes for entertaining and nail-biting watching for the lay-public but you can see how uneasy the format makes the athletes feel - Ondra very glum and Ginés-Lopéz certainly looked shocked by his result; I wonder if part of that shock was a feeling that he hadn’t done enough for the win for the reasons you mentioned. For the combined format to really work speed should be based solely on fastest time not head-to-head. Definitely think the separation in 2024 will be a far fairer competition but won’t be quite as thrilling for the public I imagine! 

Shame, a very odd contest. Winner won because of a speed 'climb' and even he look confused when he did this. 

Anyone know how a combined lead and boulder is proposed to be scored in future?

Still gonna be a multiplier AFAIK

Multiplier works fine with two events.

But is it better than additive for avoiding ties - might have to think about this - I'm sure some of the mathematicians on UKC could solve this in a flash (I'm assuming still a final with the top 8).

[e.g. 1x6 = 2x3 = 3x2 = 6x1, etc.]

Just done some noddy Excel messing - with 5 finalists and assuming no ties in either bouldering or lead, then multiplicative is better than additive for avoiding overall ties for a 2 event competition. Too much effort to extend it to 8 (or even 6 finalists) and the pattern was clear.

Some stats:

• 34 rows (*) to get all the combinations = 1+1+2+6+24
• Number of combinations with ties: additive 29, multiplicative 16
• Total number of ties: additive 35, multiplicative 20
• Combinations with one 2-way tie: additive 12, multiplicative 11
• Combinations with two 2-way ties: additive 6, multiplicative 4
• Combinations with 3 way ties: additive 9, multiplicative 1
• Combinations with 4 way ties: additive 1, multiplicative 0
• Combinations with 5 way ties: additive 1, multiplicative 0
• Combinations where "method" affects the order: 30 out of 34
• Combinations where "method" affects medals: Gold 16, Silver 24, Bronze 25

Some of the medal effects are where two share the gold rather than it being gold & silver, etc; but others are where totally different people get the gold etc.

I think the worst effect is where you get the following combination: 1&5, 2&3, 3&2, 4&4, 5&1 - leads to shared gold and bronze but the methods swop who gets which: 6,5,5,16,6 additive, 5,6,6,16,5 multiplicative.

(*) - I know it's really way more rows than this but I've assumed a fixed bouldering order because all the extra combinations will be symmetries of the original 34.

Now that Adam has been usurped and we have a new undisputed world best climber, I'm really excited to see what Alberto will manage in the real world next year. Can we invite him to Hathersage so he can immediately answer the obvious question of what can he do on grit?

What a weird and disappointing format (but power to the man for being the best athlete within that format).

Don't undersell him! He is now and forever will be the Greatest of All Time in Olympic Triple Format Climbing (Mens).

I hope.

But it's still a nightmare for the spectator to do the maths on the fly.

Addition of points awarded from top and zones achieved in the bouldering to points for route hold reached would be much more spectator friendly and produce no more ties than a normal lead comp...

Quite literally no one yet knows how the Lead and Boulder Combined will work.

Partly I think this was a dropped ball by the producer - the lack of on-screen scoreboard throughout until results were final was a pain.

When they were displayed, they were all to 2 decimal places, which AFAIK is redundant as even in a tie, everyone gets the same, not an average, so that made the scoreboard hard to read when it was up.

I know there was/is the "these results aren't final as teams might appeal" proviso for live leaderboards, but it would make it much more immediate, rather than running Excel or a notepad on the side.

For bouldering scoring... I'm torn. That Brooke got no more than anyone except Janja on B2 is harsh when she just dropped the top, but does make for exciting viewing.

In some US comps, they've tried different methods, similar to lead where there's more scoring holds, but this massively depends on the nature of the problem and you have a problem with only 5 holds, vs another with 20.