Men’s Speed Climbing: Veddriq Leonardo Takes Gold at 2024 Olympics

2024 Olympics Men’s Speed Climbing

2024 Paris Olympics brings excitement around the world as it features the incredible strenth, resilience, and determination of the world’s top athletes in many disciplines. Speed Climbing has been able to join the ranks as a featured sport in the Olympics.

On August 8th, the top finalists in men’s speed climbing went head-to-head on a 15m wall where they raced to see who could climb the fastest. Records were broken, dreams were shattered, and olympic champions were chosen. Find out who took to the podium at the 2024 Paris Olympic Men’s Speed Climbing final below.

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Gold Medalist: Veddriq Leonardo

Indonesia’s Veddriq Leonardo followed Poland’s Women’s Speed Climbing Champion Aleksandra Miroslaw by making Olympic history once again by winning the gold medal in speed climbing. Leonardo’s path to the top was marked by intense competition, but his composure and unmatched technique set him apart from the field.

Leonardo is noted as the first male speed climber to break the five-second barrier, which happened back in April of 2023. Now, it is a constant benchmark for the best male climbers to reach. The Indonesian climber himself broke the five-second barrier in all of his races at the Paris Olympics.

In the final round, he faced off against China’s Peng Wu in a neck-and-neck battle for the Olympic gold medal title. The race started off with Veddriq coming off the first holds in a slight lead over Chinese comeptitor. He was able to hold him off all the way to the top of the 15m wall to hit the buzzer in a nail-biting finish of two hundreths of a second lead.

Veddriq was able to secure the gold medal which became Indonesia’s first gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and the second Olympic medal after Indonesia received a bronze medal in badminton. This gold medal marks a great achievement not only to Veddriq’s sport climbing career, but for the country of Indonesia.

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Silver Medalist: Peng Wu

China’s Peng Wu came into the final after defeating world record holder America’s Samuel Watson. Unfortunately, two hundreths of a second stood between him and the Olympic gold medal. Wu took to the podium to receive the silver medal, shich marked consecutive silver medals in speed climbing for China’s Climbing team after China’s Deng Lijuan won the silver medal in the women’s speed climbing event.

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Bronze Medalist: Samuel Watson

The world record holder and proclaimed fastest vertical man alive saw his dreams crushed when he missed out on the final after losing to China’s Peng Wu in the semis.

In a thrilling turn around of events, Watson claimed the bronze medal and a place on the podium next to Leonardo and Peng after defeating Iranian’s Reza Alipour. Watson pulled out all the stops in the small final as he flew to the top of the wall in spectacular fashion. In the end, he went home with not only the bronze medal, but also a new world-record climb of 4.74s.

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Women’s Speed Climbing Final

Yesterday, August 7th, there was the 2024 Paris Olympics Women’s Speed Final where eight of the best and fastest female speed climbers from around the world took to the wall to face off in head-to-head battles to reach Olympic gold. For more information pertaining to the results of that event, check it our featured article on the event here.

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For more information pertaining to the 2024 Paris Olympic Sport Climbing results, location, videos, images, etc., please visit the main event pages for the two events taking place. If you are interested in more information pertaining to speed climbing, please check out the 2024 Paris Olympics Speed Climbing event page. Interested in boulder and lead climbing, check out the 2024 Paris Olympics Climbing [Boulder and Lead Climbing] event page.