Sport climber Seo Chae-hyun advances to final in women's combined event

Sport climbing medal hopeful Seo Chae-hyun qualified for the women's combined event final at the Paris Olympics on Thursday, making up enough ground in the lead portion of the competition after struggling in bouldering earlier in the week.

Seo tied for fourth in the lead semifinal with 72.1 points at Le Bourget Sport Climbing Venue in Le Bourget, north of Paris. Combined with 44.2 points from the bouldering semifinal Tuesday, Seo finished eighth overall among 20 climbers with 116.3 points to grab the last ticket to Saturday's final.

Seo was only 0.8 points ahead of Miho Nonaka of Japan, who had 64.4 points in bouldering but only 51.1 points in lead.

In the lead event, climbers get one attempt to ascend as high as they can on a route set on a 15-meter wall within six minutes. They score the maximum 100 points if they reach the top hold.

Climbers receive one point for reaching any hold out of the 10 lowest, two points for any of the next highest, three points for the any of the next highest and four points for any hold of the 10 highest.

If climbers move toward the next hold but don't reach it, they get 0.1 point.

Only three climbers had a higher lead point than Seo, with Janja Garnbret of Slovenia and Ai Mori of Japan tying for the lead at 96.1 points. Jessica Pilz of Austria had 88.1 points.

Seo is world No. 3 in lead and No. 18 in bouldering. After finishing in 13th place in bouldering, Seo said she felt confident she could score enough points in lead to move on to the final.

The eight finalists will start from a clean slate Saturday and will compete in both bouldering and lead events that same day. The objective of bouldering is to scale multiple routes with the fewest attempts within a time limit in a problem-solving mission.

Seo finished eighth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when sport climbing made its debut and the combined event featured bouldering, lead and speed.

The speed discipline has been separated for this year's Olympics, and Seo, the 2023 Asian Games silver medalist in the lead and bouldering combined event, will try to become South Korea's first Olympic climbing medalist. (Yonhap)