Sport climbing Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: Toulouse today hosts decisive Qualifiers

After an extremely long and in many ways gruelling competitive season, one of the most important events of the entire year begins today in Toulouse, France, namely the second Olympic Qualifying Event. This is basically the last chance for athletes to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

As is well known, next summer sport climbing will make its historic first appearance in the Olympic Games and, after last August’s first round at Hachioji in Japan which earned quota spaces for 8 + 8 athletes per gender, in Toulouse another 6 + 6 passes for Japan are at stake. While it’s true that at the Continental Championships there is one more place up for grabs - Moscow in March 2020 as far as Europe is concerned - chances of winning this are slim indicating that Toulouse is practically the last opportunity for athletes’ to keep their Olympic dream alive.

After a somewhat confused period during which it was not completely clear how many athletes were actually allowed to compete in Toulouse (20 or 22, no minor detail for the athletes involved), based on the Combined World Cup ranking the IFSC invited the top 22 + 22 athletes for the Combined Qualifier. The best athletes who failed to qualify in Hachioji will therefore compete using the Climbing Olympic format which includes all three disciplines, Speed, Boulder and Lead on a single day. The final ranking in France is obtained by simply multiplying the result of each single discipline. Simple as that.

Since the aim is to qualify for Tokyo no matter what, it’s interesting to note that unlike all the other competitions where it’s the final result that counts, here it’s mainly the qualification round. Considering that the best 8 will compete in the finals in Toulouse, 6 of these will likely qualify for Tokyo. Never before has a qualification round been more important.

The schedule is intense and starts today with the men's Speed competition at 11:00 am, followed by the Men’s Boulder at 13:00 and the Men’s Lead at 16:45. Women will compete at precisely the same time on Friday, while the Men’s Final takes place on Saturday evening and the Women’s Final on Sunday evening. The competitions will receive significant international coverage and will be broadcast live on the IFSC YouTube channel, visible here.

For the 44 athletes in Toulouse it’s a make or break competition. It goes without saying that all eyes will be on one of the biggest contenders for the Olympics, Adam Ondra, who somewhat surprisingly failed to qualify last August. He will battle it out against the likes of Stefano Ghisolfi, Alberto Ginés Lopez,  Bassa Mawem and Sasha Lehmann to name just a few of the extremely strong athletes fighting today to keep their Olympic dream alive.


IFSC Combined Qualifier Toulouse 2019 - Men Qualifications - SPEED


IFSC Combined Qualifier Toulouse 2019 - Men Qualifications - BOULDER


IFSC Combined Qualifier Toulouse 2019 - Men Qualifications - LEAD


Athletes competing in Toulouse
AUT Sandra Lettner
CAN Alannah Yip
CHN YueTong Zhang, YiLing Song YuFei Pan
CZE Adam Ondra
ESP Alberto Ginés Lopez
FRA Fanny Gibert, Julia Chanourdie, Anouck Jaubert Manuel Cornu, Bassa Mawem
GBR William Bosi
GER Jan Hojer, Yannick Flohé
INA Aries Susanti Rahayu Alfian Muhamad
IRI Elnaz Rekabi
ITA Laura Rogora Stefano Ghisolfi
JPN Ai Mori, Futaba Ito Kokoro Fujii, Meichi Narasaki, Rei Sugimoto, Keita Dohi
KOR Jain Kim, Sol Sa Jongwon Chon
POL Aleksandra Kalucka
RUS Iuliia Kaplina Nikolai Iarilovets, Aleksey Rubtsov
SLO Lucka Rakovec, Mia Krampl Anze Peharc, Jernej Kruder
SUI Sascha Lehmann
UKR Ievgeniia Kazbekova
USA Kyra Condie, Ashima Shiraishi, Margo Hayes Nathaniel Coleman, Sean Bailey

Athletes qualified for Tokyo 2020
1 Janja Garnbret SLO
2 Akiyo Noguchi JPN
3 Shauna Coxsey GBR
4 Aleksandra Miroslaw POL
5 Miho Nonaka JPN
6 Petra Klingler SUI
7 Brooke Raboutou USA
8 Jessica Pilz AUT

1 Tomoa Narasaki JPN
2 Jakob Schubert AUT
3 Rishat Khaibullin KAZ
4 Kai Harada JPN
5 Mickael Mawem FRA
6 Alexander Megos GER
7 Ludovico Fossali ITA
8 Sean McColl CAN