Speed Climber Sam Watson Set a New World Record—But Didn’t Win Gold

In honor of speed climbing, an event in which races can take less than 5 seconds to complete, let’s get this story done real fast.

American Sam Watson earned the rarest of Olympic distinctions on Thursday at the Le Bourget Climbing Venue: he set a new world record without winning gold. Watson scaled the top of a 15-m wall with holds in 4.74 seconds, but did so in the bronze-medal race. In the semifinals, moments beforehand, a tiny error cost Watson, as Wu Peng of China slapped the buzzer at the top first, in 4.85 seconds, to Watson’s 4.93 seconds. Indonesia’s Veddriq Leonardo beat Wu in a nail-biting final, 4.75 second to Wu’s 4.77 seconds, to clinch Indonesia’s first gold medal at the Paris Games.

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Such is the unforgiving nature of speed climbing, which for the first time is a stand-alone event at the Olympic Games. Athletes race each other head-to-head, rather than against the clock, in contests that end in the blink of an eye. 

Watson, 18, said afterward that he had made his mistake in the semifinal against Wu near the top of the wall. “Just a few little millimeters off a certain hold allowed me to get less power out of it and slow down a lot,” said Watson. 

A lot is quite relative here.

Watson is the fastest man in this sport, again—he set a world record of 4.75 seconds on Tuesday, in the preliminary heats. And yet he did not stand at the top of the podium. How is he handling the conflicting accomplishments and emotions?

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“I don't really know,” said Watson. “I haven't really gone through it. I think all that kind of stuff is external rather than internal. I have a view of who I am in my mind and that doesn't really change regardless of my performance. But other people will view me in certain ways and I hope that way is positive and a good representation of myself and my sport and my country.”  

Watson didn’t show much joy immediately after breaking his own world record in the bronze-medal race. Minutes later, however, Watson let the moment soak in. “I smiled,” he said. “The organizers, major shout-out to them, I asked them to do a photo, Usain Bolt style, with the world record.”

Another shout-out, for a millisecond, to speed climbing. The races are usually very, very close: Wu, for example, defeated Matteo Zurloni of Italy in the quarterfinals, 4.995 seconds to 4.997 seconds. The start of the quarterfinals though the gold-medal race took 20 minutes. 

How fast can Watson go? “I really do want to get under 4.6 seconds,” he said. “That really means a lot to me.” 

Word record: 4.74 seconds. Word count: 474. But no gold medals, sadly, for either of us.