We All Know Who the Olympic Favorites Are. But Don’t Count These Underdogs Out
Janja Garnbret, Sorato Anraku, and Jakob Schubert are clear crowd favorites. But there are plenty of others who could snag gold.
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As climbing returns to the Olympic stage all eyes are on the crowd favorites who are most likely to win—or at least podium. Janja Garnbret of Slovenia, whose name has become synonymous with dominance, is aiming for her second Olympic Gold. Austrian Jakob Schubert, who took home the bronze medal in the Tokyo Games, is poised to medal again. But unlike the high-octane world of Speed, where winners are more easily predicted based on their best run times—men who have clocked sub-five seconds and women who have clocked sub-seven—the Boulder & Lead Combined is ever evolving. Myriad factors—routesetting, weather, humidity, time of competition—ensure that outcomes are never certain. Among the elite climbers vying for Olympic gold and glory, several rising stars are primed to swoop in for a surprise upset.
Underdogs in Sport Climbing at the Paris Olympics
One such competitor is Japan’s Ai Mori, who currently sits first on the IFSC Lead rankings. Mori made her international debut on the World Cup stage in 2019 and has proven her remarkable versatility time and time again. Mori has 13 World Cup and World Championship podium finishes, not counting Youth Championships, with three gold medals in the 2022 season alone. She qualified for an Olympic ticket during the 2023 World Championships in Bern, Switzerland, where she placed first in lead and third overall.
Mori is best known for her incredible power, technical prowess, and Herculean ability to fight the pump. She has also proven herself a tough competitor for Garnbret in the past, beating her twice in the lead discipline, once in Koper, Slovenia, in 2022 and once in Bern in 2023, although it’s worth noting that the Bern win went to countbacks. On the bouldering mats, Mori is no stranger to finals rounds and has many top 10 finishes. However, she frequently lags behind the top guns. Standing at just five feet and one inch tall, her height can be seen as a disadvantage compared to her taller competitors. In the 2024 Innsbruck World Cup, Mori failed to establish on a jump-start boulder problem that sparked heated debate among routesetters and competition enthusiasts on whether it was a technique issue—or if the routesetters unintentionally boxed her out. Luckily, Mori is also known for her ability to try unconventional beta that favor her flexibility when others stick to the obvious. Mori has a real fighting chance to give Garnbret a run for her money.
On the men’s side, a likely candidate to ruffle some feathers is first time Olympian Jesse Grupper, competing for Team USA. Climbing since age 6 and present on the IFSC circuit since 2012, Grupper has shown consistently that he can keep a cool head in high-pressure situations. In his early competition days Grupper was known for being a lead specialist and, indeed, almost all of his six podium finishes were in lead alone. However, he is by no means a weak boulderer. In a conversation with USAC National Routesetter Roy Quanstrom, Quanstrom recalls watching Grupper dispatch V13s back to back.
Grupper appeared on the Nugget Climbing Podcast and talked about how the turning point in his competition career came when he acknowledged his weaknesses as a boulderer: coordination, awkward starts, and slabs. He began training specifically for it and learned fast. Grupper won gold at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, in both Boulder and Lead. That punched his ticket to Paris. However, after yesterday morning’s slack semi-final bouldering performance, Grupper will have to fight hard in lead to make it to finals.
The Paris Games is set to showcase an even more electrifying competition than the Tokyo Games, this time with live audiences, a different format, an increase in medal winning opportunities and 68 athletes from 22 countries. The reigning champions and crowd favorites for gold have set a high bar, but the potential of contenders like Mori and Grupper promises to push climbing into a new sphere.
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