How a team of climbers designed a gravity-defying boulder for a new Olympic sport

New sports aren’t guaranteed a callback at the Olympics. Here’s how the bouldering engineers designed routes to keep people glued to the competition.

Most of us have seen enough basketball courts, lap pools, and race tracks to know how athletes are supposed to move on each surface. But what about a gravity-defying boulder? Having made its debut at Tokyo 2020, sports climbing is a relatively new kid on the Olympic block. But it is back at the Paris Olympics with an even wilder boulder (for better or worse named Titan). Titan is a near 15-foot tall wall covered with jagged, colorful shapes that are scattered  across the surface in four different, yet equally dizzying patterns.