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Akiyo Noguchi
Bouldering, then combined. Noguchi won four bouldering World Cup overall titles, then trained speed and lead to win bronze in the Olympic combined at Tokyo 2020, her final competition. Her late shift into three disciplines is one of the clearest examples of a specialist rebuilding for the new format.
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Adam Ondra
Lead and bouldering. Ondra won both the lead and bouldering world titles in 2014, a rare double, and another lead world title in 2019. He also made the Olympic finals in the combined format, though speed was his clear weakness, which is exactly the trade-off the separate Olympic events were later designed to address.
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Jakob Schubert
Lead and combined. Schubert has won the world lead title four times (2012, 2018, 2021, 2023) plus two world combined titles, and Olympic bronze in both Tokyo and Paris. His lead endurance carries him, and his medals in two different Olympic combined formats show a climber who adapted his bouldering to stay in contention.
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Shauna Coxsey
Bouldering, then combined. Coxsey won the bouldering World Cup overall in 2016 and 2017, Britain's first, then added speed and lead training to qualify for the Tokyo combined event. Her move from specialist to all-rounder mirrors what the Olympic format demanded of a generation.
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Tomoa Narasaki
Bouldering, speed and combined. Narasaki won world bouldering titles in 2016 and 2019 and the 2019 combined world title, helped by a speed technique, the "Tomoa skip", that he devised to save time on the standard wall. Few climbers have changed how a discipline is climbed while also winning in another.
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Janja Garnbret
Bouldering, lead and combined. Garnbret won Olympic gold in the three-discipline combined at Tokyo 2020 and the boulder-and-lead event at Paris 2024, and in 2025 took both the lead and bouldering world titles. She is the clearest case of one climber dominating both power and endurance disciplines in the same season.
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Alberto Ginés
Combined. Ginés won the first Olympic men's climbing gold in Tokyo at 18, in the three-discipline combined format, winning the speed round and finishing well in lead despite being a lead specialist rather than a boulderer. His win is the best illustration of how the multiplication scoring rewarded balance over one dominant discipline.
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Seo Chae-hyun
Lead and combined. Seo won the lead World Cup overall as a teenager in 2019 and the 2021 world lead title, then competed in the boulder-and-lead format at the Olympics. Her precise footwork on long routes made her South Korea's first big competition climbing star.
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Jessica Pilz
Lead and combined. Pilz won the 2018 world lead title and has stayed near the top of lead competition while qualifying for the Olympic finals in both the combined and boulder-and-lead formats. She shows how a lead specialist can build enough bouldering to compete in the Olympic events.
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Natalia Grossman
Bouldering and lead. Grossman won the 2021 world bouldering title and the 2022 bouldering World Cup overall, and has also competed on the lead World Cup circuit. Her dynamic, coordination-heavy style suits modern route setting, which increasingly blurs the line between boulder problems and lead routes.
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Brooke Raboutou
Boulder and lead. Raboutou won silver in the boulder-and-lead event at Paris 2024, the first Olympic climbing medal for an American woman. Her steady scoring across both rounds, rather than a single dominant discipline, is what got her on the podium.
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Toby Roberts
Boulder and lead. Roberts won Olympic gold in the boulder-and-lead event at Paris 2024 at 19, overtaking the leaders with a strong final lead climb. His win came from being consistently good in both halves, the exact profile the event rewards.
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Sorato Anraku
Bouldering and lead. Anraku won Olympic silver in the boulder-and-lead event in Paris, has won World Cup events in both disciplines, and took the 2025 world bouldering title in Seoul. Still in his teens for much of that run, he is the leading example of a climber genuinely elite in both power and endurance formats.
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Lee Do-hyun (climber)
Bouldering and lead. Lee made his name in bouldering World Cups, then won the 2025 world lead title in front of a home crowd in Seoul, beating a final full of lead specialists without topping the route. That switch from boulder star to lead champion is exactly the range this list is about.
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