OLYMPIC climbing chiefs have been accused of “bullying” Japan star Ai Mori after she was left unable to START her event.
Mori, 20, is the lead climbing world champion and was backed to win a medal at the Olympics after a strong score of 96.1 in the semi-final.
However, viewers have accused event organisers of discriminating against her height by having the starting boulder too high.
Standing at 5ft 1″, Mori was unable to grab onto the starting holds on her first climb even after a run and jump start.
This led to her scoring zero points on the first of her four runs.
She went on to score 39 points in the bouldering section to leave her down in 7th place.
A strong lead section of the event saw Mori rocket into provisional gold following a score of 96.1 out of 100, 8.0 better than second place, after getting just two holds from the top.
This pushed her above Team GB‘s Erin McNeice, who ended up finishing in fifth spot.
But Mori was denied as a medal as Slovenia‘s Janja Garnbret, America’s Brooke Raboutou, and Austria‘s Jessica Pilz all produced strong lead climbs of their own to push Mori down into fourth.
Reacting on social media, fans claimed there was some sort of conspiracy against Mori from the routesetters.
OLYMPICS FREE BETS – SIGN UP OFFERS AND DEAL FOR PARIS 2024
One said: “Having the literal start of the climb so high is insane.”
A second said: “Ai Mori has been scammed, she couldn’t even start one boulder because of her height….”
A third said: “All I can say route-setters did Ai Mori dirty i’ll never forgive them.”
Another said: “Sport climbing is a prime example of how Ms Mori is being bullied.
“It’s really infuriating to see short people performing impossible tasks on the Olympic stage. What kind of diversity are you kidding me about?!”
Bouldering is one half of the Boulder & Lead Combined event—and it’s all about testing the athletes on wildly difficult movements.
The boulder rounds contain four “boulder problems,” each of which tests subtly different skills.
There are strips of tape on the starting of holds of each problem, showing where exactly climbers need to place their hands and feet at the start of each attempt.
After that, they can do whatever sequence of movements they want to get to the finishing hold—which they need to hold onto with two hands.
In semifinals, each climber gets five minutes to solve each problem, with a five-minute break in isolation between each one. In finals, they’re given just four minutes per boulder and four minutes between them.
Each of the four boulders is worth a maximum of 25 points, which is what climbers get if they climb to the top on their first try.
But there are two intermediate zone holds—the first worth 5 points, the second worth 10 points—that give partial credit to climbers who reach them.
0.1 points are subtracted from the climber’s score for each failed attempt if they do eventually reach a zone or top.
This rewards climbers who do things fast and helps spread the competitors’ scores based on attempts.
A fifth added: “Not the first time this has happened for Ai Mori. Absolutely outrageous how she is discriminated against by routesetters in this way.”
Ahead of the Paris Games Mori had said she wanted to enjoy her debut experience there.
She said: “The Paris Olympics will be the biggest stage of my climbing career but I plan on being loose and enjoying it, and I hope people have fun watching me.”
