IFSC World Cup Bouldering Analysis¶
Most Recent Event: Climbing World Cup (B,L) - Innsbruck (AUT) June 14-18, 2023¶
The International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) was founded in 2007 with the goal of encouraging, promoting, and developing the sport of climbing worldwide. With its addition to the most recent Summer Olympics, climbing in general has seen a huge spike in interest. Speed climbing in particular has taken the title of "Fastest Sport" in the Olympic games, with the fastest time of just barely over 5 seconds! (Update: As of the most recent event - Seoul 2023 - Leonardo Veddriq set the world's fastest time ever by breaking the sub-5 second climb! He did it not once, but three times!) But this project isn't going to focus on speed - rather, it's going to focus on the wonderful discipline of bouldering.
Bouldering is rock climbing in its purest form. No ropes, no harnesses - just you and the wall. With bouldering being one of the more accessible disciplines in climbing (the others being lead and speed), it's no surprise that it's rapidly growing in popularity worldwide. All you need is a pair of climbing shoes, some chalk, and a willingness to push yourself to your absolute limits.
Project Goals¶
In this analysis, I aim to help shed some light on boulderers from around the world. I have scraped the results from the IFSC website for all of the World Cup Events from 2007 to present day in the hopes of answering the following questions:
- Who are the most successful climbers?
- Who has the most gold medals?
- Which climbers have made it to the finals the most?
- Which country produces the best climbers?
- Are any countries more dominant than others?
- How have climbers performed over time?
- Do any climbers stand out from the rest?
I aim to update this every time a new event takes place, so that the results and the analysis are as up-to-date as possible.
IFSC Competition Data¶
Below is a combination of every IFSC World Cup event result since 2007. It contains the event name, athlete id, rank, name, gender, country, year, and scores for every single competitor. We will be using this data as a base, and manipulating it to get more desirable data.
NOTE: I would like to note that due to the way IFSC recorded the results, unforseen circumstances like bad weather, or injury, some events were not always played through completion or recorded properly. For example, on several occasions the weather was so severe that some rounds had to be skipped altogether. The most recent of which was in Seoul 2023, where the rain caused the entire semi-finals and finals to be combined into one. This means that if you qualified for the semi-finals, you were essentially competiting in the finals as well. Another example is when a climber qualifies for the semi-finals/finals, but then becomes injured and decides not to compete. For the sake of this project, I have decided to include as many accurate results as I can - meaning that if a climber qualified for a round but did not participate, I still count it toward that climber's statistics. There may be some small discrepancies in the numbers I present compared to their actual values.
As we can see from the above, there are almost 14,000 rows of data across all of the World Cup events we scraped earlier. Each row contains that climber's scores for that specific event. A quick note on how to interpret the scores: The number in front of the 'T' (Top) indicates how many Tops the climber got - the higher the number, the better. The number in front of the 'Z' (Zone) indicates how many Zones the climber got - similar to Tops, the higher the better. The first number after the 'Z' indicates how many attempts the climber took to reach the top, while the second number after the 'Z' indicates how many attempts the climber took to reach the zone. Tops take priority, followed by zones, then by attempts in case of a tie. An ideal score for a bouldering round with four boulders would look like '4T4Z 4 4', indicating that the climber reached the top of all four boulders in their first attempt (a.k.a. "flashing").
We can use the search bar to look at the results of just a single climber to get an idea of their overall performance. For example, one of my favorite climbers is the two-time Bouldering World Cup Gold Winner Jongwon Chon from South Korea. If we type his name into the search bar above you can see all of his results from his participation in the IFSC. You can see a quick summary of his appearances below.
As seen above, Jongwon Chon has appeared in 48 qualification rounds (as of May 1, 2023), and has made it to an astounding 27 finals! That's incredibly impressive considering how difficult it is to consistently perform at such a high level!
Climber Statistics¶
The table below contains more statistics related to each climber's performance during their IFSC career.
As you can see from the above, we have condensed our original dataset down to just over 2,250 unique climbers. The table has been sorted by the number of times the climber has appeared in the finals. Akiyo Noguchi has made it to the finals an astounding 81 times! That's almost 30 more than the next most climber, Anna Stöhr who has 54 finals appearances. If you sort by F_Pct - the percentage of times a climber has made it to the finals, then Janja Garnbret comes in first with a mind-boggling 95%! This means that she's made it to the finals almost every single time she decided to compete! She is often considered by many to be one of the greatest female climbers of all time.
Along with their respective countries of origin, you can see the number of times each climber appeared in the qualification, semi-final, and final rounds. Additionally, you can see a percentage of times the climber reached that specific round. However, there is still some important information we can figure out. For example, How many times did each climber reach the podium? How many Bronze, Silver, or Gold medals did they get?
Podium Counts For Individuals¶
Now that we have all of the data in a single dataframe, we can find out! Below is a table that lists each unique climber with all of the same information as above, but additionally there is information related to the number of times that climber has reached a podium position. It breaks down even further to describe how many times that climber has reached a specific podium position, both in raw count and percentage form. Here is a quick explanation of the columns:
| Column Name | Explanation |
|---|---|
| ID | The climber's unique numeric ID used on the IFSC website |
| Q_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber makes it to the qualification round. If they compete, then they automatically make it to the qualification round, so it's 100 |
| S_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber makes it to the semi-final round. Calculated by dividing Semi-Final by Qualification |
| F_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber makes it to the final round. Calculated by dividing Final by Qualification |
| P_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber makes it to the podium. Calculated by dividing Podium by Qualification |
| P_Pct_F | Percentage of time that a climber makes it to the podium if they've made it to the finals. Calculated by dividing Podium by Final |
| Bronze_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber wins a bronze medal when they compete. Calculated by dividing Bronze by Qualification |
| Silver_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber wins a silver medal when they compete. Calculated by dividing Silver by Qualification |
| Gold_Pct | Percentage of time that a climber wins a gold medal when they compete. Calculated by dividing Gold by Qualification |
Similar to before, we can search for an individual climber to see their numbers. If we look at the results for Jongwon Chon, we can see that he makes it to the podium 25% of the time when he competes, and he wins the gold medal a little over 10% of the time! Additionally, when Jongwon makes it to the finals, he wins a medal 44% of the time!
Top 20 Climbers¶
Below is an interactive chart that allows you to look at the top 20 climbers for the given option in the dropdown menu. It defaults to Podium, so we can immediately see the top 20 climbers based on the total number of times they've reached the podium. An interesting fact is that for every single option except Gold, Akiyo Noguchi is on top. She is definitively one of the greatest competitive climbers to have ever competed. She retired after winning a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and is currently married to another climbing superstar, Tomoa Narasaki.
Podium Counts For Countries¶
Which countries produce the most successful climbers? Who should aspiring climbers be watching in order to improve their own training regimens? The following table can shed some light on the countries that participate in the IFSC. Historically, Russia, France, and relative newcomer Japan produce very successful climbers. Looking at the upcoming visualization can help show just how good those countries are at climbing.
Right away we can see that Japan, Austria, and Russia have the most gold medals - with only a single medal difference between Japan and Austria. In terms of silver medals, Japan and Austria lead the pack again, though this time the former has twice as many as the latter. A similar thing can be said with bronze medals. Japan simply produces the most medal-winning climbers. Interesting to note though, that Japan also has the second-most number of climbers competing, which would help explain how they win so much - they are simply sending more climbers to compete than most countries. Similarly, France sends the most climbers to compete, yet they come in 4th, 3rd, and 6th in terms of bronze, silver, and gold medals respectively. So it's clearly not just about sheer number of competitors.
Number of Finalists By Country Over Time¶
Which countries had the strongest performance over time? We've looked at pure counts of appearances and medals, but not really the performance over time. The following table shows the number of times a climber from a given country reached the final round of a world cup event per year. According to section 8.6 of the IFSC Rules, the quota for the Final round shall be six (6) climbers. To properly view all climbers who made it to the final round, we shall be looking at all climbers who have a rank less than or equal to 6. It's a bit difficult to discern any kind of meaningful pattern or trend from this table, but the upcoming chart will help display it visually.
Based on our earlier tables and charts, it's no surprise that Japan is at the top of the list in terms of how many of its climbers have reached the finals. Russia comes in second, but interestingly, France and Austria come in third and fourth respectively - however there's a fairly decent gap between them and Russia.
If we examine the above results, it's very clear that Japan and Russia dominate bouldering competitions (in terms of the number of times one of their climbers reached the finals). Fascinatingly, Japan has reached the finals round at least once per year for every single year except 2020 - which was right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the IFSC cancelled two competition events due to health and safety concerns. This resulted in 2020 only have a single bouldering event for the entire season. That one event was the European Continental Championships, so non-Europeans weren't allowed to compete anyways!
Top Climbers By Year¶
Below is a bar chart that allows you to filter by year to see the top 5 performing climbers for that bouldering competition season. For the current season, Mejdi Shalck is off to a hot start, with two gold medals in two events (Hachioji & Seoul). He's a new up & comer who will most likely have an insanely bright future and a very exciting climbing career.
Top Climbers By Country¶
If we sort by country, we can see the podium counts for individual climbers a bit better. Of particular interest is Austria (AUT), Russia (RUS), and Japan (JPN). With Austria in particular we can see that Anna Stöhr and Kilian Fischhuber simply dominated the scene with a whopping 42 and 35 medals won respectively. Similarly, Dmitrii Sharafutdinov of Russia and Tomoa Narasaki of Japan have 26 and 25 medals respectively. But even more impressive than all of that is Akiyo Noguchi's 63 medals! No one has come even close to that number.
Map of Country's Participation in IFSC World Cup Events¶
Individual Finals Appearances Over Time¶
We've seen the overall quantity of who's won the most, but the following visualization helps show the performance of a climber over their careers. To make the visualization a bit less cluttered, only climbers who appeared in at least 4 finals are included. The values have been sorted by the weighted average of final appearence per year, so it more accurately shows that climber's highpoint in their career. You can see how each climber performed year-to-year, and it's easier to see when a climber bursts onto the scene, and when they slowly get phased out by younger climbers.
Observations¶
Below is a short list of climbers that have either performed well for an extended period of time, or are proving that they are force to be reckoned with. In no particular order:
| Men | Women |
|---|---|
| Kilian Fischhuber | Anna Stöhr |
| Dmitrii Sharafutdinov | Alex Puccio |
| Sean McColl | Akiyo Noguchi |
| Adam Ondra | Shauna Coxsey |
| Jakob Schubert | Miho Nonaka |
| Jan Hojer | Fanny Gibert |
| Jongwon Chon | Stasa Gejo |
| Tomoa Narasaki | Brooke Rabatou |
| Kokoro Fujii | Natalia Grossman |
| Yoshiyuki Ogata | Oriane Bertone |
All of the above climbers have been in finals over at least 10 years, or they seem to be rising stars leaving their mark on the competitive climbing scene.
Event Statistics (In-Progress)¶
Below is table representing some statistics from each unique event. It is fairly self-explanatory, with columns depicting the Event name, Year, Location, number of Climbers, and then the last six columns represent the total number of tops for each round (Q_Top, S_Top, F_Top), as well as the percentage of tops made based on the number of climbers (Q_Top%, S_Top%, F_Top%). The final three columns effectively represent how difficult each competition was, as it is a measurement of how many tops were made versus the maximum number of tops possible for the given round.
Note: In 2007, the Qualification round was different than every other year, as climbers had to climb six boulders instead of five. The below table takes this into account.
The below charts show several statistics - namely the number of climbers, and the top counts/percentages. Feel free to pick a different statistic from the dropdown menu to see how that statistic varies between the aggregated events, countries, and years. There don't seem to be many immediate or noticeable patterns. However, we can see that the number of climbers does seem to slowly increase over time - though the pandemic did halt that trend in 2020. Also, the percentage of tops in the qualification round (Q_Top%) seems to decrease slightly over time, which would indicate that the qualification rounds have slowly been getting harder.
Summary¶
- Russia, France, Austria, and Japan tend to produce some of the most successful climbers.
- Japan has dominated the climbing scene, especially after 2015.
- Japan & Austria have won more gold medals than any other country.
- Akiyo Noguchi is the single most successful climber in terms of medals won.
- We're slowly seeing an increase in the number of countries that participate in IFSC Qualifiers, as well as the overall number of climbers.
- Qualification rounds have slowly gotten more difficult, based on the percentage of tops.
Future Steps¶
This started off as a project for me to learn how to use Selenium. It has since evolved to become a simple analysis, then a project to learn how to implement GitHub Actions & Pages, and finally a project where I would implement Plotly interactive visualizations. I'm sure it will continue to evolve in the future. Future next steps include:
- Better visualizations
- Potentially including climber's height and producing visualizations around it
- Seprate pages for Lead and Speed climbing
Thanks!¶
Thank you for taking the time to look at my work! I hope it was interesting and/or visually appealing. I'm always trying to improve as a data analyst by learning new techniques and methodologies. I hope this encourages you to watch the IFSC World Cup competitions, or better yet, to get out and climb!