• Brooke Raboutou will go to Tokyo 2020 for the climbing event.
• She is the first USA athlete ever to qualify for Olympic climbing.
• More qualifiers for the climbing event will be held throughout the year.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Brooke Raboutou is going to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo for the climbing event.

Qualifying In Japan

The first qualifiers for the Olympic climbing event were at the IFSC Climbing World Championships in Hachioji, Japan. Hachioji is less than an hour away from where the 2020 Summer Olympics will be held. There, Raboutou qualified for the Olympic climbing event.

Climbing has three different disciplines. Speed climbing is a race between two climbers that scale a 15-meter wall. Bouldering is when climbers scale as many fixed routes as they can within four minutes. Lead climbing is when climbers climb as high as they can on a 15-meter wall within six minutes. There are no re-climbs in lead climbing.

Normally, a climber would choose one or two different disciplines to focus on. To be an Olympic climber, they need to do all three. This is known as combined climbing. Because of this, the IFSC Climbing World Championships was combined climbing.

During the World Championships, Raboutou placed sixth in the speed round. She then ended in tenth place for the lead and bouldering rounds. Her final standing was ninth place. Her ninth-place finish allows her to go to Tokyo in 2020.

By our count here at OlympicBettingOdds.com this officially makes Raboutou the seventh member of Team USA. The others are three open water swimmers, two modern pentathletes, and a triathlete. Tokyo 2020 will only have 20 athletes per gender with a max of two per country in climbing. This means that team USA can potentially send up to three more climbers to Tokyo. There are seven more opportunities for USA climbers to qualify for the climbing event and join Raboutou.