With more medals up for grabs, China's sport climbers are raring to scale new heights at Paris 2024 and boost the fashionable fitness activity's profile even further at home.

After impressing at climbing's Olympic debut in Tokyo two years ago, the national team is embracing the sport's expansion at next year's Paris Games as a golden opportunity to take its soaring popularity to another level.

The quest kicked off in style on Saturday as teenager Luo Zhilu opened Team China's 2023 World Cup season with an impressive fifth-place finish in boulder — a discipline in which China has traditionally not excelled in — at the first leg of the 12-stop series in Hachioji, Japan.

Boulder involves climbers scaling fixed routes on a five-meter-high wall with the goal of reaching the top within a time limit. Points are awarded for reaching the top of a boulder or a zone, while unsuccessful attempts lead to deductions.

As China's biggest hope of taking on the world's best in this technically challenging discipline, 17-year-old Luo surprised a strong field in the semifinals to place second. With her endurance sapped by that tough battle, she ultimately finished fifth overall.

Brooke Raboutou of the United States won gold, scoring three tops and four zones out of four boulders. Germany's Hannah Meul took silver and Japan's Anon Matsufuji claimed bronze.

Despite missing out on a medal, Luo was stoked by her performance in just her third appearance on the circuit.

"Through this competition I can gauge the gap between myself and the world's best, and get a clearer understanding of my potential and my weaknesses," said Luo, who finished third at her World Cup boulder debut in Italy in June 2022 to become the first Chinese — man or woman — to win a medal at the series.

"I am now more confident than ever to fight for Olympic qualification for next year's Paris Games," she added.

To gain much-needed experience for its young squad, Team China plans to compete at eight World Cup legs over the next three months in all three Olympic disciplines (boulder, lead and speed), as well as the world championships in August and September's Asian Games.

All three disciplines featured at Tokyo 2020, but just one all-around gold medal per gender was up for grabs in Japan. The expanded Paris 2024 program will offer two gold medals per gender, with boulder and lead combined, and one for speed climbing.

Similar to boulder, the lead event tests athletes' ability to climb as high as possible but on a taller wall — typically 15 meters high — and allows them to use ropes anchored to the wall.

The exciting speed event sees climbers racing one-on-one and side-by-side on a 15-meter-high wall against the clock in a crowd-pleasing knockout format.

By sending a 22-climber roster overseas to race against the sport's elite on a frequent basis, Team China aims to secure as many direct Olympic tickets as possible and earn sufficient ranking points to be invited to compete at an Olympic qualifier in Indonesia, according to team manager Wang Yunlong.

"This year our target is to qualify as many climbers as possible for Paris, while we will definitely go for gold at next year's Games," Wang said during a mobilization meeting last week in Beijing.

According to the International Federation of Sport Climbing, the top three finishers in boulder and lead combined, and the top two climbers in speed (on both the men's and women's sides), at this year's worlds in Bern, Switzerland will earn direct quotas to Paris 2024. The second direct qualification window opens in November at continental tournaments (an Indonesia meet for Asia), where only the winners secure direct Olympic tickets.

The remainder of the qualification berths will be decided next spring at an invitational Olympic qualifier series.

"We have to take each World Cup leg seriously because the rankings matter a lot for the pathway to the Olympics," said Wang.

Speedy progress

Compared to the combined discipline, Chinese climbers have enjoyed considerable success in the speed event over the past decade, with the likes of current national team coach Zhong Qixin, women's national-record holder Deng Lijuan and rising men's star Long Jianguo among the elite "vertical speedsters" in the category.

Led by Zhong, China claimed five gold, three silver and three bronze medals from four World Cup stops last year to finish top of the overall speed standings in 2022. Expectations of Olympic glory in Paris are therefore high, but Zhong is not taking anything for granted.

"After last year's international races, we realized that we have plenty of weaknesses in overall strength and conditioning, especially power, compared to the elite climbers in the West," said Zhong, who in 2015 became the first Chinese man to top the individual speed World Cup season rankings.

To maximize the potential of his young athletes, Zhong has brought in his former personal trainer, Lukasz Lojas of Poland, as the national camp's strength and conditioning coach.

"They are already at the elite level ... they don't have any problems with mobility or flexibility. It's like natural for you guys," said Lojas, who began working with the national program in September last year.

"Our specific task in the gym is to make athletes stronger and more powerful. We mainly focus on maximal strength development and power development."

The season's first World Cup speed race will take place in Seoul on Friday, with both Deng and Long primed to challenge the current women's and men's world records, held by Poland's Aleksandra Miroslaw (6.53 sec) and Indonesia's Kiromal Katibin (5.00 sec).

"I'm pretty confident that I can crack the five-second barrier sooner rather than later," said Long, who tied the world record at last month's national trials.

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