Sport climber Seo Chae-hyun (Yonhap)
Sport climber Seo Chae-hyun (Yonhap)

Sport climber Seo Chae-hyun won her second straight Asian Games medal on Thursday with bronze in the women's boulder event.

Seo finished third with 70 points, as Zhang Yuetong of China took gold with 85 points and Ai Mori of Japan grabbed silver with 84.8 points at Portmesse Nagoya Exhibition Hall in Nagoya, central Japan.

The objective of boulder is to complete the most routes in the fewest attempts on 4-meter walls. Climbers receive 25 points for finishing a route ("Top") and 10 points for reaching a designated midway hold ("Zone"), but lose 0.1 point for each unsuccessful attempt. With four problems presented in the final, the maximum score was 100 points.

Seo had the same score as Luo Zhilu of China but won the tiebreaker because she had the higher score in the previous phase, the semifinals, with the perfect 100 points.

In the final, Seo earned the full 25 points in each of her first two boulders but scored just 10 points in each of her next two.

Seo won silver behind Mori in the combined event at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, where the competition was a mix of boulder and lead, of which the goal is to ascend as high as possible on a route set on a 15-meter wall within six minutes.

Three years ago, the final was canceled due to inclement weather and the medals were awarded based on climbers' scores from the semifinals and qualification.

Seo is considered a better climber in lead than boulder. She is No. 2 in the lead world rankings but No. 30 in the boulder rankings.

"I have been concentrating on the lead event, and so I thought I may not be able to compete with those who focus on boulder," Seo said. "I just enjoyed the event from the semifinals to the final, and I only worried about my own performance. After I did so well in the semifinals, I thought maybe I could do something here. But I didn't put any pressure on myself to finish first in the final."

The women's lead competition starts with the semifinals on Friday and will wrap up with the final on Saturday.

"I won silver in Hangzhou and bronze here today. I want to win gold to complete my medal collection," Seo said.

In the second sport climbing event of Thursday, the men's speed, both South Koreans in action, Jo Jin-yong and Kim Dong-jun, were eliminated in the quarterfinals. (Yonhap)