This article was updated and corrected yesterday to reflect the new changes issued by the IFSC in February of 2019
There is a lot of confusion as to how climbers will be able to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and how our Canadian athletes will fair. We decided to make it simple by creating a graphic that will explain all the different pathways for qualification and how many athletes will be selected from each pathway.
First and foremost, there are only 20 spots per gender in total for the event. One of these spots will be given to the host country for each gender and one spot will be given to the Tripartate Commission for each gender.
That leaves us with 18 spots that are up for grabs (for each gender) in total. If that wasn’t a small enough number, there is another rule stating that there can be only two athletes per country (per gender). Simply translated, if Canadian athletes are doing awesome, the max we can send is four athletes (2 male and 2 female) to the Olympics.
Here is a quick break down.
The first pathway is the IFSC Combined World Championship, and it will allow for 7 of the top performing athletes per gender to qualify. Keep in mind, these spots still respect the country rule above to qualify.
The second Pathway is the 2019 Olympic Qualifier Event. This will see the top six athletes taken from the top 20 athletes of the overall 2019 IFSC World Cup ranking. Again, if some of these athletes have already qualified, they will take the next athlete down the list until they have 20 athletes from each gender competing. The same rule will also apply to the top six athletes who will be selected for the Olympics from this event, meaning that if an athlete places in the top six but has already qualified, they will take the next top performing athlete until they have six qualifiers for each gender.
The third and final pathway will be made up of five separate Continental events. The winner of each of these events, or highest ranked athlete who has not already qualified, will then qualify for the Olympics. Continental Championships are held every two years and are usually limited to climbers who are a part of that particular continental federation or council, thus globalizing the field of competitors as a whole.
For further reference, please see the IFSC Qualification Memo.
