Sport Climbing was first introduced to The World Games in 2005 – the agility and speed of the best makes it a highly popular spectator sport at the Games. 27-year-old Ludovico Fossali is one of the world’s biggest stars in climbing a 15 m overhanging wall in the fastest possible time.
He was World Champion in 2019 and European Champion last year, so has to be one of the favourites for a Speed gold medal in The World Games 2025 Chengdu. He competed in the Tokyo Olympic Games held in 2021. This will be Fossali’s second edition of The World Games – he took part in Wroclaw in 2017.
“I’m super excited to be competing in Chengdu,” he says. “Our sport has grown a lot since Wroclaw, and in addition to that, we’ll be competing in a new format of speed climbing.”
Most proud of European title
In terms of performance, which of your two golds – World Champion 2019 and European Champion 2024 – are you most satisfied with?
“I can say they are two different things. The 2019 World Championship was also about qualification for the Tokyo Olympic Games. I was younger, and not the favourite in the race. I can say it was a pretty special moment, where I was in perfect flow during the competition.”
“Talking about the European Championship, I can say I’m most proud of this one. I unfortunately missed the opportunity to participate in the Olympics in Paris; I felt the need to take a break but I kept going, and some good things happened!”
Fossali first made his name known in sport climbing at the age of 15, when he won the European Youth Cup in Speed. He went on to win several medals at the Italian Climbing Championships, including the speed climbing gold medal at the 2017 championships when he was 20. He won the overall bronze speed climbing medal in the 2017 International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Cup, and the speed climbing gold medal at the 2019 IFSC World Championships in Japan. Here he placed 9th in the Combined event, which secured his qualification for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Exciting new Speed format – “it’s crazy fun”!
The World Games will be the competition debut for the new four-lane Speed format, ‘Single 4’.
“This is the thing I want to try the most!” exclaims Fossali. “We did a trial in Madrid at the end of 2024 and it was crazy fun! We immediately saw that China and Indonesia had already tried the format, and they were strong. There were new things we had never done in training, like starting while watching the light, instead of hearing a sound (the second athlete has to do that). Even thinking that you are competing with a team-mate, and not against him, is something very special.”
There are two identical parallel routes on the wall for the existing Single format, with two athletes competing simultaneously, and four routes on the wall in Single 4 and for the Relay.
Training – “super-important to prioritise technique”
The gymnastic moves, in the incredibly quick ascents achieved by the very best in the game, are unbelievable! The ascent of 15 metres, with overhang, is achieved in less than 10 seconds – almost a ‘blink and you miss it’ performance. Men and women compete on standardised routes which are not modified between rounds.
Sport climbers use both the climbing wall and the gym for training. “Speed, explosiveness and power are the most important priorities in training, I would say,” Fossali explains. “We need to climb a wall as fast as possible, while going against gravity, so all the things that help in that, we need to do.”
“We train more on the wall than in the gym. You try to get the power and all the ‘muscle stuff’ in the gym; on the wall I think it’s super-important to prioritize technique, to get to find the smoothest way to reach the top.”
Looking forward to Chengdu
Fossali has competed in many parts of the world, and is looking forward to his time in Chengdu.
“Not my first time in China, but the first one in Chengdu!” says Fossali. “We should have some time to be tourists and explore some Chinese culture; I hope to find some good restaurants and eat some Asian cuisine! And I would like to go around to see some other sports in The World Games.”