Becoming an Olympian

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 25th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the Olympics!

Tomorrow, the Summer Games kick off in Paris. Athletes from around the world will compete in tournaments such as volleyball, fencing, and diving. And this year, a completely new sport debuts! Competitive dance!

That leads to a question: Who decides what sports deserve Olympic attention?

BROWN: WORLD met up with an Olympian at a climbing gym outside Atlanta to talk about how her sport made it to the Olympics. Bekah McCallum wrote the story, and Kristen Flavin brings it to us now.

EMMA HUNT: I hit my knee so hard a little while ago I had to get stitches. That’s like, super rare. I’ve only heard of one other person that has needed stitches from speed climbing.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Twenty-one-year-old Emma Hunt straps on curved rock climbing shoes.

HUNT: And then I have my chalk to keep your hands dry. It’s like gymnastics chalk.

She’s at Stone Summit, a rock climbing gym in Kennesaw, Ga. In the months leading up to the Olympics, she spent over 25 hours here every week training for the 2024 Games.

HUNT: So training’s changed a lot over the last year and gearing up for the Olympics. And also like before that trying to qualify. And so it's a lot of repetition, and doing the speed wall over and over again, trying to get it kind of perfect.

Hunt is a speed climber, and the Paris Olympics will feature her discipline as a distinct category within rock climbing. That’s just one of the many updates coming to this year’s games.

MUSIC: [Olympic announcement music]

Athletes will compete in 32 sports chosen by the International Olympic Committee—or the IOC. It’s a 107-member organization that oversees the games. The IOC chooses to include games that will help boost viewership. That’s how they chose the tournaments for the 2020 Olympics. Sports director for the IOC Kit McConnell:

KIT MCCONNELL: One of the two new disciplines we’re introducing 3x3 basketball which really for us is one of the key indications of the youth and urban focus of the changes.

It’s a lengthy process to bring a game to the IOC’s attention. Climbing enthusiasts founded the International Federation of Sport Climbing in the late 2000s. That federation petitioned the IOC in 2015 to include climbing in the Olympic Games. The following year, the IOC agreed to unveil sport climbing at the 2020 Summer Olympics.

ANNOUNCER: But it’s Janja Garnbret of Slovenia who gets the gold medal and becomes this sport’s first female Olympic champion.

Climber Emma Hunt watched those Games in 2020 and watched Janja Garnbret win gold in sport climbing. But Hunt didn’t anticipate competing at that level. She has competed for over 16 years. Being an Olympian hasn’t been a lifelong goal.

HUNT: That was never like a dream I could have.

Emma Hunt Photo by Bekah McCallum

At least, not until fairly recently. That’s because sport climbing is divided into three categories: boulder, lead, and speed. When sport climbing came to the Tokyo Olympics, athletes competed in all three categories for one set of medals.

HUNT: Speed is so different than boulder and lead. Boulder and lead is like problem solving in the moment. Speed is like a rehearsed track.

Speed climbers will have their own competition this year, separate from the lead and boulder tournament. Hunt began training for Paris as soon as she heard the news. Most days, it takes 30 minutes to warm up for her climb. But she spends less than half a minute on the nearly 50-foot Olympic speed walls. Her all-time record is 6.30 seconds.

HUNT: It's very satisfying getting like a really low number. And I definitely have a perfectionist in me, and speed climbing is all about perfection.

Hunt is one of 34 women climbing in the Olympics this year, up from 20 in the previous games. That increase is part of a new gender quota set by the IOC.

ADVERTISEMENT: Paris 2024 will be the first Olympic Games with full gender equality on the field of play.

For the first time ever, the 2024 Olympics will include an even number of male and female athletes: 5,250 of each. So-called “gender parity” is a step in the right direction. But it could have unintended consequences according to Brock University’s Michele Donnelly

DONNELLY: What we've seen, really problematically as far as I'm concerned, if we’re making arguments about gender equality, is that men's events have been removed in order to add women's events.

For example, the IOC nixed the men’s 50 kilometer relay after the Tokyo Olympics. A mixed gender event will take its place. But the equality push hasn’t entirely left men out. Audio here from NPR:

NPR: The pool of athletes who can compete in artistic swimming has gotten bigger. The Olympics and the World Aquatics Championships will now allow men to participate.

The gender quota isn’t set in stone. The Olympics change from year to year. Sports get added and discarded pretty regularly.

It’s unlikely, but the IOC could discontinue rock climbing if worldwide participation dips. Hunt isn’t thinking about that or about the millions of people who will watch online and in person as she climbs. With under 10 seconds to compete, she’s staying focused on the wall.

HUNT: And so I've had races where I slipped. But the other girl fell. So I won the race because I stayed on and I kept going even when I wanted to cry on the wall. It's a lot of emotions to handle in like, six seconds but just not giving up but keep going.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

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