Sport Climbing Stats, statistics from over 30 years of sport climbing competitions

I was intrigued by the fact that in any sport, fans and athletes know a lot about both the present and the past. In short, any swimmer, tennis player or teenage gymnast knows who the great champions are of their respective sport.

Climbing is a bit like surfing, until around 2010 some of the best in the world had not really taken part in competitions. Climbers such as Alex Huber, Klem Loskot, Manolo, Chris Sharma and Wolfgang Güllich took part in only a handful and then stopped competing almost immediately, so there has always been a division between the world of competitions and what happens at the crags.

When I started climbing I knew full well who Cristian Brenna or François Legrand were, and then of course there was Yuji Hirayama who had shown the world that a great athlete was inevitably also a formidable rock climber. And arguably the opposite did not hold true, because dealing with the tension of a competition and some rules, such as solving a boulder problem in 4 minutes or climbing a daunting route in just 6, are truly something completely different from sending a route at the crag. Those I mentioned above have always stated this fact extremely honestly, while it's often the non-pro climbers who have somewhat confused ideas about these two worlds.

In recent years climbing competitions have become increasingly popular, and also far more international than in the past. Witnessing the Speed in Jakarta or bouldering in Seoul in fabulous city locations watched by thousands of people is truly impressive. That's why I thought this page was missing and also needed, and I was inspired by swimmingstats.

I have to say that I follow several sports very analytically from which I learn a lot for climbing training. For example, there is this mistaken belief that at 30 you are old for a climbing World Cup; this is clearly nonsense, you can win until at least 38, or rather, dominate. Just be an athlete and not just a climber... I think this page, which highlights the the careers of Jain Kim, Jakob Schubert and Akiyo Noguchi, for example, will shed light on things like this, too.

The page is graphically edited by one of my assistants, he will say who he is. I collected the data that already exists but is often poorly aggregated. The ideas on the posts are also his, and I think that in the future others might become involved in this editorial process, perhaps creating an international team of editors. In the meantime, over 50 champions of past and present have already interacted with Sport Climbing Stats, indicating that something like this was missing.

by Fabio Palma

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