Sweat, skill and world-class brush work: Speed climbing is thrilling spectacle

Competitors resembling vertical gymnasts appear to defy gravity in sport that also features rigorous use of domestic cleaning equipment

It is good to see that, following the lead of curling in the Winter Games, skill with domestic cleaning equipment has found a place in the summer Olympics too. At the Le Bourget climbing venue to the north of the city, a huge crowd was treated to some magnificent brush work as the world’s best male speed climbers undertook the bouldering qualification round. Each athlete would come out on to the stage in front of a steepling grandstand to attempt to work their way round four different climbs. All were armed with a small hand brush. This they would use to scrub the sweat and chalk left by the previous competitor off the tiny fragments of toe and finger holds. But climbing by its very intention requires getting high. So to reach the topmost marks, the athletes applied a brush on a long pole. For much of the morning’s activity, the world’s best climbers looked like window cleaners attending to a top floor flat.
And on a stiflingly hot morning, several competitors were slipping and sliding off the walls. Those brushes had to be wielded adeptly. More to the point, such housework had to be done quickly: they were up against the clock. Competitors had four and a half minutes to negotiate their way across each one of four different walls. Each looked like a child’s obstacle course turned vertical, with brightly coloured blocks marked 5, 10 and 25, indicating the points available if they could get both hands on to the mark. And boy was it hard, each wall offering very different challenges. From a distance in the stands it looked as though there was nothing to grip on to. Toe holds were seemingly non existent, finger holds smooth as silk. And that’s without mentioning the overhangs.
The climbers used every part of the body they could to gain purchase: fingers, toes, elbows, knees. Seeing them in action was like watching vertical gymnastics, as they stretched and balanced and put their legs into the most improbable positions. Some failed to score at all on some of the walls. The Japanese Sorato Anraku, however, scored 25 on both his first two climbs. At 17 he is the youngest competitor out here. 
Mind, the two British competitors were not far behind. Hamish McArthur came in eighth, while Toby Roberts finished the round third, one of only five competitors to get both hands on a 25-pointer on one of the walls. It was a result that vindicated the thoroughness of his preparation. The 19-year-old had apparently been training for the past few months on an exact replica of the Parisian wall constructed in a climbing facility in London. Though in truth it was probably the work he did in the kitchen to improve his mastery of the scrubbing brush, that made the difference.