By Chang-Ran Kim
PARIS (Reuters) -Indonesia’s Veddriq Leonardo won a gold medal in the men’s speed climbing at the Paris Games on Thursday in a historic Olympic title for his country, while American Sam Watson set a world record to win the bronze medal race.
Leonardo, 27, improved his time with each race starting with the quarter-final, ultimately beating China’s Wu Peng by two hundredths of a second with a personal best of 4.75 seconds.
His win gave speed-climbing powerhouse Indonesia their first Olympic gold in a sport other than badminton, and only their ninth since the country’s first appearance at the Games in 1952.
“I feel very happy, very joyful,” he said. “My heart raced (in the competition), but I stayed focused and finished it.”
In a cruel twist of fate for Watson, his best performance on Thursday came in his final sprint up the 15-metre wall, when he beat Iran’s Reza Alipour in the battle for bronze.
As the clock flashed a world record of 4.74 seconds, the 18-year-old remained stone-faced, knowing that the title had been his to lose after setting the previous world mark of 4.75 two days ago.
“I definitely would say that at that point I was still disappointed,” the Texas native said.
“The world record is obviously a very, very cool feat, so I am happy with that. But you come here with the goal of winning gold.”
In the end, the day belonged to Leonardo, a three-times World Cup champion and the first speed climber to ever break the five-second barrier.
Sport climbing made its Olympics debut in Tokyo in 2021 but speed was controversially combined with the boulder and lead disciplines, which require a completely different skill set. Paris is the first time speed specialists are competing in their own area of expertise.
In the women’s lead semi-final, Slovenia’s sport climbing great and defending champion Janja Garnbret soared to an event-best 96.1 points, adding to her near-perfect boulder result two days ago to take her to the final atop the leaderboard.
Athletes have six minutes to climb as high as possible up a 15-metre structure in a single attempt in the lead event, racking up points with every hold reached. The sum of the scores from boulder and lead determines the eight finalists.
Ai Mori, 20, was the only climber to match Garnbret in lead, and her progress to the final meant a changing of the guard for Japan, with 27-year-old Tokyo silver medallist Miho Nonaka just missing out on the top eight.
The United States saw the elimination of Natalia Grossman, while Brooke Raboutou went through to lock in her second chance to win an Olympic medal.
(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Alison Williams and Ken Ferris)
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