Para Climbing: Place Your Bets, Not Everyone Gets a Shot
- Collectif de journalistes
- 7 hours ago
- 12 min read
June 26, 2024. Bonn, Germany. From the headquarters of the International Paralympic Committee, the news breaks. And it is huge. Para climbing is joining the program for the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games. For the climbing world, it feels like an earthquake. For the discipline, it is a massive stage. For the athletes, it is the peak of a career, an American dream suddenly made real. But another reality sets in almost immediately: not everyone is going to California. Some athletes will hit the jackpot in a selection process that feels uncomfortably close to a lottery. The others, whose disability classifications were not chosen, will watch the event from France.
Behind the church in Saint-Géry, in the Lot region of southwest France, a trail appears almost out of nowhere. A few yards of dirt, a few low branches, and then the cliff rises into view. Among the Sunday climbers, Nicolas Moineau moves forward without hesitation. He wears opaque glasses. He is blind. Cane in hand, following his guide dog Upsy, the 48-year-old physical therapist slips between rocks and roots with ease, as if he were reading the landscape through his fingertips.
“This is my backyard,” he says. Every wrinkle in the rock seems familiar to him.
Moineau was para climbing world champion in 2012 and runner-up in 2014 and 2016 in the B1 visually impaired category — B stands for Blind. His résumé commands respect. But at the base of the cliff, rope over his shoulder and a shy smile on his face, he blends into the scene almost like any local climber. Once he ties in, the champion appears. His movement is precise, smooth, almost instinctive. From below, his friends guide him by voice, occasionally pointing out a key hold — “left hand, a little lower” — but most of the time he just climbs. He knows the route by heart.
Moineau climbs today for the pleasure of it. But he also has a very clear goal in mind: the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. The announcement nearly two years ago that para climbing would join the Paralympic program upended a decision he had made in 2018: to hang up his climbing shoes. “At that point, I realized our competitors had improved, while we — the French team — had really stagnated because we didn’t have the resources to progress,” he explains.
That frustration came with a deeper need: to find a kind of freedom again. For seven years, he stepped away from the circuit and turned to outdoor climbing. That break pushed him toward bigger and bigger goals, all the way to sending 8a — about 5.13b in the Yosemite Decimal System — a level already demanding for a sighted climber.
California dreamin'
He put on a competition bib again in 2025. “I needed a challenge,” he says. “What interests me about the Games, beyond the visibility, is mostly having the means to push performance.”
More coaching, training camps, strength work, psychological support: “We moved into a different league.”
The results came quickly: two podiums at the world championships, two French national titles. Seen as a real medal contender, Moineau still refuses to get ahead of himself.
“I’m going to be really serious about it and go all in,” he says. “I don’t go to competitions as a tourist.”
Thousands of miles from the cliffs of the Lot, the stage is already set. Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, will host the para climbing events a few weeks after the Olympic climbing competition. A temporary wall will rise in front of the Pacific Ocean, with a blue horizon stretching out behind it where sea and sky blur together. It is an almost Hollywood setting, designed for performance and spectacle.
Eighty athletes will be selected: 40 women and 40 men from around the world competing for the sport’s first Paralympic medals. It will also be the first time a sport enters the Paralympic program with gender parity from the start. For a discipline long kept in the background, and now pushed onto the world stage after its recognition by the International Paralympic Committee in 2017, it is a major milestone. Para climbing is young, spectacular, and already connected to a sport with a strong Olympic presence. It also fits a broader ambition: to attract new audiences and modernize the image of parasport.
“Our presence at the Games is an incredible opportunity,” says Hélène Le Rouge, manager at the French Mountain and Climbing Federation’s national parasport division. “It is a powerful tool to bring in new participants, structure clubs, and develop the sport nationwide.”
Behind the event, the sport is already scaling up: more visibility, more recognition, and broader prospects for athletes. In climbing gyms, a “Paralympic effect” is starting to show. The number of licensed athletes is rising. Training programs for coaching disabled climbers are multiplying. More clubs are opening so-called inclusive sections: 23 clubs in 2022, compared with 150 in March 2026. Funding for para climbing is moving in the same direction, with increased support from France’s National Sports Agency.
The change also shows up in athletes’ daily lives: more training camps, stronger medical support, more international competitions. “Today, they train almost every month, compared with just a few camps a year before,” Le Rouge says.
But as the sport gains visibility, one rule reshuffles the deck: at the Games, not every category gets invited. In Los Angeles, being among the best will not be enough. Athletes will also have to be in the right classification. For those whose disabilities do not fall into the eight selected events, the road ends there. No appeal. It is a brutal reality: performance alone no longer guarantees a place. And access to the Games can start to look like a lottery.
At the Foot of the Wall
Inside the Penhars sports hall in Quimper, Brittany, the air is thick with chalk and anticipation. On Saturday, March 14, 2026, the small world of French para climbing has gathered for the national championships. Fifty-four athletes are preparing to compete in a gym more crowded than ever.
At the back of the hall stands a large gray wall split into six routes. Purple, blue, white: each line has its own color. All morning, athletes get familiar with their routes. The announcer works the crowd and shakes the hall’s speakers. At 1 p.m., the competition finally begins. Athletes have six minutes to reach the top hold and claim the top, the official finish of the route.
Solenne Piret cruises through qualification. In the final, the face of the discipline fights hard and takes the French national title. She even gets a standing ovation during the medal ceremony. The five-time world champion has delivered. No surprise there. It is also a strong statement ahead of the Games, where everyone hopes to earn a ticket.
Their life together revolves around climbing. They met at the French championships in 2023. Since then, the two para athletes have installed a climbing wall at home and shared the same dream: the Olympic rings. Pottier, who has climbed since childhood, had a stroke at 18 and is classified RP1. Routhiau, who has dwarfism, competes in RP3. He is eligible. She is not.
The contrast is striking with one of her compatriots competing at the same championships. At 52, Bastien Thomas is mourning his Olympic dream despite finishing second on the podium in Quimper. Originally from the slopes of the Garlaban massif near Aubagne, Thomas is a serious athlete. He regularly does Metafit and cross-training.
“It’s the training of American G.I.s,” he says proudly. His disability, severe hemiparesis, causes muscle weakness on one side of his body. It also makes speaking difficult at times. On June 3, 2025, one year after the announcement that para climbing would enter the Paralympic Games, Thomas learned he would be staying home.
The 2019 RP1 world champion — RP covers limited strength, stability, or range of motion — has since been moved down the classification ladder: reclassified as RP2, then RP3. RP3 was not selected for Los Angeles. So that is it. No L.A. Like him, many athletes have felt the same disappointment and the same sense of injustice. For them, the Games are already over.
Away from the wall, far from the noise of the competition, Aloïs Pottier finds Marine Routhiau, his partner. Their life together revolves around climbing. They met at the French championships in 2023. Since then, the two para athletes have installed a climbing wall at home and shared the same dream: the Olympic rings.
Pottier, who has climbed since childhood, had a stroke at 18 and is classified RP1. Routhiau, who has dwarfism, competes in RP3. He is eligible. She is not. Routhiau will only be able to cheer him on in Long Beach. “We knew there would only be eight medals. That’s how it goes when a sport is added,” she says, with a trace of bitterness.
They are a couple bound by climbing and its values, united in the daily reality of disability, but split by criteria that have nothing to do with performance. “We figured RP1 would be selected,” Routhiau explains. “Their disability is easier to recognize. Mine is a little more catch-all.” For Pottier, everything will come down to 2027. He will need to shine at the world championships in Brno, in the Czech Republic, to secure his ticket to the Games.
“Fairness isn’t for everyone,” he says. “Para sport is full of unfairness, all the time.”
Bastien Thomas, French Para-Climbing Runner-Up
The announcer keeps the show moving. The crowd chants the champions’ names. The mood is joyful because today, para climbing is being celebrated. Never mind that for many athletes, the American dream is slipping through their fingers.
Classification protocols have become more complex over time. Even with a multi-step process overseen by World Climbing, the international climbing federation, they reveal a degree of subjectivity that can be frustrating. A para athlete must first be eligible for one of the nine disability categories recognized by World Climbing. They must undergo a medical examination: physical assessment, imaging if needed, and eye tests for athletes seeking classification in the Blind category. The doctor provides a diagnosis documenting the impairment, but the doctor does not decide the classification.
The problem is that disability cannot be reduced to nine boxes. There are as many realities as there are disabled athletes. Some conditions, such as chronic pain, can create a disadvantage without pain itself being taken into account in the classification system.
Once the para climber is medically recognized as eligible, they must submit their medical file to trained classifiers, often doctors, physical therapists, coaches, or former athletes, all with expertise in the sport. These classifiers review the medical tests and put the athlete through a dynamic assessment on a climbing wall. The goal is to confirm or challenge the doctor’s diagnosis.
Finally, there is competition observation, where classifiers assess how the disability, whatever it may be, affects athletic performance. Only after that final observation is the para climber classified. Another fault line remains, quieter but just as real: how disability is seen. Or, more precisely, what the Games want to show. What the public sees, and what it understands.
“When you can see that someone is disabled, it has impact. It’s spectacular,” says Aurélien Cirotte. Ewen Clodic, the French AU3 champion in Quimper, rejects that logic. “More visible or less visible, it’s still a disability,” he says. Bastien Thomas sounds resigned. “Fairness isn’t for everyone,” he says. “Para sport is full of unfairness, all the time.”
It is a view shared by Hugues Lhopital, an associate researcher and lecturer in sports science at Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University. In an article for Vertige Media, he explained that to classify is inevitably to rank — and therefore to exclude. That injustice is sharpened by the Paralympic Games, which try to fit disabilities into boxes in part to make the spectacle easier for the general public to understand.
Despite the unfairness this creates, everyone seems to agree on one point: unfair competitions are still better than no competitions at all. And even if the sense of injustice hangs over the room, no one wants to spoil the celebration.
Routhiau refuses to give up.
“What we hope is that the Paralympic committee sees the potential in our sport, and that the federation then pushes for more categories at the next Games,” she says.
The next step is clear: keep going, and work for the next generation.
That next generation is already stepping onto the wall. Smiling, blond ponytail pulled back, Elsa Boutel Ménard arrives at the base of the route. Her guide, Victor Matile, is never far away.
“Right hand at twelve o’clock. Bring your left foot up level with your right knee. Push through your leg.” The instructions come fast. Clear, sharp, precise. Through a microphone, they reach the young visually impaired climber. Guided by her coach’s voice and lifted by her parents’ cheers, the climber from Nantes reaches the top. She wins by a wide margin. Almost routine.
At just 18, the high school student is already a star. Crowned French champion again this year in Quimper, she also has an impressive international record: one bronze medal, three silvers, and one gold across World Cup rounds from the United States to Austria, from Laval to Seoul. Her life is organized around climbing. A packed schedule. A family fully mobilized. This is elite sport. Olympic-level sport. And yet, when the categories were chosen, the decision went the other way. Elsa Boutel Ménard sees too well. “I have a prosthetic left eye and 0.5 out of 10 vision in my right eye,” she says. Her visual acuity puts her in B3. “I’m not far from moving into B2. It depends on what the doctor says in a few months,” she adds.
Boutel Ménard has only the slimmest chance of setting foot in California. For now, the Games remain out of reach. Still, she keeps training in the gym, keeps improving, keeps working relentlessly.
To keep moving forward, she looks to the leaders in the Blind category: Nicolas Moineau, and Guillaume Degenève, who finished second at the French championships in Quimper. She hopes for better in 2032. But plastic — climbers’ shorthand for indoor climbing on artificial holds — is not the end goal. Rock can still be seen as one of climbing’s foundations: an open space for adaptation and expression, indifferent to categories and disability. In other words, a return to what matters.
Letting Go
Maybe what matters is here, above Lake Annecy, where Bruno Longuet and Siloë Tetaz are climbing freely. Lake views. Full sun. Nothing to envy in the postcard setting promised to the chosen few in Los Angeles. Far from the crowd in Quimper, far from Olympic stress and the arbitrary feel of classifications, this is a calmer kind of climbing. Far from the chill of doctors’ offices, the atmosphere is warm. Climbers greet one another. Sitting on a rock beside the routes they have just climbed, Longuet and Tetaz take some distance.
For Longuet, it is time to move on after the disappointment of missing the Olympic dream. The answer is to return to the basics: the cliff. “I don’t think I’ll keep that dream in my head,” he says. “Other things drive me: my para climbing group, and mountaineering too.”
Tetaz shares that love of open spaces. “I’m always outside wandering around, walking in the mountains, getting some air by the lake, reading a book there in the evening,” she says.
It is the first time the two champions have climbed together outdoors. The guiding principle is simple: pleasure. Move beyond the boxes. Enjoy the rock. Perform in their own way, at their own pace, in a setting that more than does the job.
Longuet and Tetaz agree: the cliff is the essence of climbing. A feeling of connection with nature. Few rules, if any. And the chance to let their bodies express themselves without limit.
“You have to adapt to the cliff, find different holds,” Tetaz says. “Outside, you have options.”
At the base of the cliffs in Saint-Géry, Moineau is also enjoying his “backyard.” Here, the world champion is an ordinary man. A living legend in his discipline, he almost goes unnoticed.
Everything is simpler here, slower. All afternoon, Moineau climbs at his own pace. He chooses the routes he likes. “If I want to rest five or ten minutes between each hold, I can,” he says. The rest of the time, he talks with friends, takes off his climbing shoes and slips into flip-flops, pets Upsy. For Moineau, whose category has been selected for Los Angeles, “the Games are almost secondary.” The cliff comes first. “What motivates me is the love of climbing. I like improving and pushing myself. That’s it,” he says. The words match his climbing: direct, without detours. He does not like noise, crowded spots, or roads roaring below the cliff. “When we climb, we focus on simple things.”
When retinitis pigmentosa appeared during his teenage years, it slowly ate away at his sight until it erased it, taking many of his future plans with it. Still, he held on: to rocks, to texture, to sensation.
Outdoor sport quickly became “an escape,” a way to regain autonomy, to climb with anyone willing to guide and belay him. The Games remain his priority, but Moineau is already looking past them.
“It won’t change my life,” he says. “After Los Angeles, I’ll keep climbing on rock.” Away from the spotlight, the cliff does not care about selections or classifications. No boxes, no quotas. The Paralympic Games are a crowning achievement, both for the discipline and for the climbers selected. But those who lose out in the lottery will still find the mountains open.
One thing remains certain: each of them, in their own way, is finding a route to the top.
This reported piece was written and produced by Enzo Calderon, Edgar Causse, Matthieu Delour, Sacha Gaudin, Juliette Hirrien, Théo Lamarque, Emma Likaj, Victor Nogues-Szalkowski, Maxence Pourpoint, and Ana Puisset-Ruccella.
