Olympic Qualifier Series 2024: The evolution of sport climbing

Development of the Sport Climbing World Championships

Three years after the development of a climbing World Series and two years after the first Climbing World Cup, the inaugural Climbing World Championships were held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1991, with competitions in lead climbing and speed climbing. They were to be held every two years.

Innsbruck, Austria; Geneva, Switzerland; Paris, France; and Birmingham, Great Britain hosted the next four World Championships with only lead and speed competitions at each. In that time, the size of the Championships had grown from 110 to 180 athletes.

Boulder climbing had been officially approved as the third discipline of sport climbing in 1998, with the first World Cup events in bouldering in 1999. In 2001, the discipline was added to the World Championships in Winterthur, Switzerland.

After 2011, the Championships were moved to even-numbered years so as to avoid a clash with the World Games, at which sport climbing had featured since 2005 and were to be held again in 2013. At the 2012 World Championships in Paris, the combined event – which brought all three disciplines of lead, boulder, and speed together – was contested for the first time. Para-climbing was also added to the official World Championship programme around the same time, with its debut in 2011.

The Championships were moved back to odd years – beginning with 2019 in Hachioji, Japan – after sport climbing’s addition to the Olympic programme. Now, every other Championships – the ones held in years immediately before the Olympics – serves as an Olympic qualifier.

The 2023 World Championships in Bern, Switzerland, saw the Combined event change its name and format from a lead, boulder, and speed event to a refreshed “Boulder and Lead” event. That was after speed climbing was granted its own separate event at the Olympic Games.