Paris 2024 Olympics - Men’s Bouldering Semi-final
- Monday 5th August 2024
Anraku, Naraski and Roberts are the top three finishers in the men’s Boulder semi-final on climbing's opening day at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The eagerly-awaited sport climbing finally got underway earlier this morning in the specially constructed Le Bourget Climbing venue in front of a capacity crowd. Starting with the men’s Boulder semi-final, the twenty athletes all faced the same four boulders. This round didn’t include an inspection period so that climbers got five minutes each for their attempts. Climbing in reverse order to their seeding, the action began at 9am (BST) and was all over just after 11am.
M1 was a powerful opener featuring hard moves through a roof which lead to an awkward position to finish. A toe-hook dyno start to M2 leads to powerful moves on big but unhelpful holds into a heart-breaking double-clutch dyno finish. M3 was the coordination boulder; a standard lache lead directly into a second all-points-off sideways dyno to a second volume. From here a couple of moves on better holds lead to a paddle sequence to finish. M4 was the vertical “slab” the meat of which involved hideous balance moves out left to a “keep it together foot flick and stop” final move.
Climbing third, Hamish McArthur was one of the early climbers to impress; he hoovered up both bonus holds in his first two attempts on M1 and then, with a minute still on the clock, left the mats rather than thrash himself with another last-minute poor attempt. Clearly Hamish was playing the smart game! M2 went even better for Hamish when he fell on the last move on his flash attempt. Despite persisting however he didn’t improve on his initial attempt. Hamish also did well on M3 getting through all the co-ordination jumps to get the 2nd bonus only to fall off the slopey paddle moves back right. Hamish came within an ace of latching the 2nd bonus on M4 too but ultimately finished with an extremely solid 34.2pts.
Hannes Van Duysen (BEL) and Paul Jenft (FRA) also climbed early and impressed; like Hamish, they too finished having got three of the four 2nd bonus holds – respectively they finished with 34.3, 34.2 and 34.1points each.
Looking to overtake these early finishers were higher-ranked seeds including defending Olympic Champion Alberto Gines Lopez (ESP), Yannick Flohe (GER), Sam Avezou (FRA), Alex Megos (GER), Adam Ondra (CZE), Colin Duffy (USA); all strong climbers and very capable boulderers too. However, of this group only Sam Avezou (9th seed) and Adam Ondra (8th seed) were able to better the scores of the early leaders. Sam Avezou had almost topped some of the earlier blocs but he sealed a high place finish with a top on M4 much to the delight of the home crowd. As ever, all eyes were following Adam Ondra’s progress too, he’d almost managed to top M1 but looked uncomfortable on the middle holds on M2 and failed to impress on M3. Finally, however, Ondra excelled on M4 when he managed to follow Avezou to the top. To say he was delighted was an understatement; he jumped so high after he landed on the mats he might almost have “placed” in a high-jump event! Ultimately, Avezou and Ondra’s top on M4 propelled them beyond the three early leaders finishing on 49.2 and 48.7pts respectively.
By the time the top five seeded climbers Dohyun Lee (KOR) Tomoa Narasaki (JPN), Jakob Schubert (AUS), Toby Roberts (GBR) and Sorato Anruku (JPN) – respectively 5th through to 1st seed – all began their rounds the difficulties of the various problems were well known to the viewers. Locked away in the isolation zone, however, all the top seeds knew was that very few competitors were returning to isolation early nor were there many massive crowd reactions indicating climbers had topped boulders. They knew it would be hard and the final standings would be down to them.
Dohyun Lee never really settled into the job and finished with a much lower score than was expected. Of the remaining four competitors Jakob Schubert and Tomoa Naraski had years more experience than the two youngest competitors, Toby Roberts and Sorato Anraku. Could they compete though with the young guns in what often proves a young man’s game? Proving that you can never discount him, Jakob Schubert delighted the expectant crowd with his efforts on M1; having fallen going for the 2nd 10-point bonus on his first attempt Schubert hung for an absolute age before delivering the first top on M1 on his second attempt. Earlier Ondra had got close to topping but Schubert proved he had the composure – and endurance – and having tried several methods eventually unlocked a sequence which worked for him. Toby Roberts got painfully close to topping M1 as well, in fact, it seemed as though he had but obviously, the camera angle obscured his body and whilst it appeared he’d topped he didn’t. Climbing last, Sorato Anraku – like Schubert earlier – also topped M1 albeit without any dramas!
Despite getting painfully close none of the top seeds were able to get their hands to stay on the finishing holds of M2 until Sorato Anraku got the first and only top of M2 on his 2nd only attempt; little wonder his nickname is “Sticky”! Two blocs in and Aranku had already taken the lead with more points than most had managed to accumulate in the whole round! With the coordination and slab problems to come, it was starting to look like the young 17 year old Japanese ace was going to be a run-away Janja Garnbret-style victor! Neither Schubert nor Naraski looked good on the coordination jump start on M3 so it was down to Toby Robert and Sorato Anraku to see what they could do. Co-ordination – especially Lache - moves have been Toby’s undoing in the past but he showed how much he’d worked and improved at this style when he opened his account on M3. Flashing to the 1st 5-point bonus Toby continued without hesitation and almost secured the 2nd 10-point bonus on his first attempt. He secured these on his second attempt and over his next attempts came painfully close to the top. Much to the crowd’s surprise Sorata Anraku couldn’t improve on Roberts’ performance on M3 either; M3 was the one bloc that no one managed to top.
With the top four competitors all zoning in on the final boulder, Tomoa Naraki was the first to top; he did so on an early attempt too. Having made a solid start topping M1 Jakob Schubert round had somewhat fizzled out; his efforts on M4 didn’t amount to much either. By this stage in the round, Toby Roberts – arguably one of the favourites to medal overall – wasn’t getting the points on the scoreboard despite climbing well. Climbing under immense pressure on his final boulder Toby however utterly aced M4 securing the top with an extremely mature performance. Collecting his first top propelled Roberts from 6th place and somewhat off the pace to within 0.3 points of Tomoa Naraski’s who was in 2nd place at that point with only Sorato Anraku to left to attempt M4. Once again going against the flow, Sorato Anraku wasn’t able to impress on M4 and didn’t top.
In the end, it was a thrilling but low-scoring Boulder round for the men. All but one of the blocs had been topped and competitors finished well spread out. Sorata Anraku finished in top place with a total of 69.0pts ahead of Tomoa Naraski in 2nd on 54.4pts and Toby Roberts in 3rd on 54.1pts. Chasing the top three were Sam Avezou, Adan Ondra and Jakob Schubert on 19.2pts, 48.7pts and 44.7pts respectively. Finishing in 7th through to 9th place were the three early leaders Hannes Van Duysen (34.3pts), Hamish McArthur (34.2pts) and Paul Jenft (34.1pts) whilst Dohyun Lee ended in 10th with 34.0pts.
Missing from where we might have expected them to finish in the top ten were Colin Duffy in 11th, Yannick Flohe (12th), Alberto Gines Lopez (14th) and Alex Megos (15th); all these will now have to secure a very good lead run in Wednesday’s Lead semi-final to stand much chance of qualifying for the final on Friday. Amongst the other Lead specialists who will be looking to seriously boost their overall score are Sasha Lehmann (SUI) and Jesse Grupper (USA), they finished in 16th and 18th respectively.
