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Higher, faster, stronger: Everything you need to know about Sport Climbing at the Olympics

Team USA athletes give us a Sports Climbing 101 session, as the climbers detail what you need to know about the Olmpyics' newest competition and how exposure from the Games could impact the sport.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BROOKE RABOUTOU: Climbing in the Olympics will be a combined format, which is the combination of three disciplines. There's bouldering, speed climbing, and lead climbing. Bouldering and lead climbing are based on difficulty, and speed climbing is based on time. And then they will just multiply your scores from each event individually, and the lowest score wins.

KYRA CONDIE: The fact that climbing is in the Olympics really suits the Olympic motto in general. Like, "citius, altius, fortius" is "higher, faster, stronger". And it really relates to climbing, I think. Higher is lead climbing, faster is speed climbing, and stronger is bouldering. The more people who'd be introduced to climbing, the better.

I think making the sport more inclusive, more accessible is something that I hope comes from this extra exposure that climbing is going to get. Hopefully more funding. Maybe climbing, like, in a vital pathway for more and more people, I think, is only going to be good, and something I'm really excited about with this extra media attention.

NATHANIEL COLEMAN: It's also nerve-wracking, because I think that as a sport grows, and if it grows exponentially fast, faster that its community can teach the newcomers, then it faces a lot of challenges. And I just hope that us as climbers can keep some of the roots of climbing in the sport as it grows.