IIn honor of speed climbing, a discipline where a race can end in less than 5 seconds, let’s get this story over with quickly.
American Sam Watson claimed one of the rarest of Olympic honours on Thursday at Le Bourget climbing complex: setting a new world record without winning gold. Watson scaled the top of a 15-metre wall with holds in 4.74 seconds, but did so in the race for the bronze medal. In the semifinals just before, a small mistake cost Watson the win, as China’s Wu Peng was first to beat the siren at the top in 4.85 seconds, to Watson’s 4.93 seconds. Indonesia’s Veddriq Leonardo beat Wu in a nerve-wracking final, 4.75 seconds to Wu’s 4.77, to give Indonesia its first gold medal of the Paris Games.
Read more: The inside story of how Noah Lyles achieved this incredible 100-meter victory
That’s how relentless speed climbing is, being held for the first time as a separate discipline at the Olympic Games. Athletes compete head-to-head rather than against the clock, and the competitions are over in the blink of an eye.
Watson, 18, said afterward that he made his mistake in the semifinal against Wu near the top of the wall. “Just a few millimeters away from a certain hold made me get less power and go a lot slower,” Watson said.
A lot is quite relative here.
Watson is once again the fastest man in the sport – he set a world record of 4.75 seconds in the heats on Tuesday. And yet he didn’t make it to the top of the podium. How does he deal with the contradiction between success and emotions?
Read more: Omelettes, air conditioning and expressing emotions: How Gabby Thomas won Olympic gold in the 200 m
“I don’t really know,” Watson said. “I haven’t really been through it yet. I think all of those things are more external than internal. I have an idea of who I am and that doesn’t really change regardless of my performance. But other people are going to see me a certain way and I hope that view is positive and a good representation of me, my sport and my country.”
Watson was not very pleased after breaking his own world record in the bronze medal race. Minutes later, however, Watson was taking in the moment. “I was smiling,” he said. “The organizers, kudos to them, I asked them to take a Usain Bolt-style photo with the world record.”
Another millisecond of praise for speed climbing. The races are usually very, very close: Wu, for example, beat Matteo Zurloni of Italy in the quarterfinals by 4.995 seconds to 4.997 seconds. The start of the quarterfinals in the race for the gold medal lasted 20 minutes.
How fast can Watson go? “I really want to stay under 4.6 seconds,” he said. “That really means a lot to me.”
Word record: 4.74 seconds. Word count: 474. But unfortunately no gold medal for any of us.
