Accompanying data to "The Fast and the Furious: Tracking the Effect of the Tomoa Skip on Speed Climbing"

This dataset contains the official competition times from International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) speed climbing competitions. The raw times data was compiled via automated extraction from publicly available tournament records hosted on the official IFSC website. The indicator of Tomoa Skip beta was derived by watching recordings of competitions on YouTube. It serves as the primary replication and data source supporting the academic paper: Chou, Caleb, and Andee Kaplan. "The Fast and the Furious: Tracking the Effect of the Tomoa Skip on Speed Climbing." Chance 38.1 (2025): 31-40. Description of the data and file structure This repository encompasses speed climbing competition results dating from 2012 to 2022 scraped from the IFSC website. It contains information pertaining to individual climber’s performance in the qualifying and final rounds of each speed climbing competition that they have competed in. We also have determined which climbers utilized the Tomoa Skip and in which events they used it in. As this data is not recorded anywhere, the only way to determine which climbers used the Tomoa Skip was to view videos of climbing competitions broadcasted by the IFSC and record which individual climbers used the Tomoa Skip in each competition. This was done by viewing filmed broadcasts of the final rounds of speed climbing competitions held from 2018 to 2022 on the IFSC YouTube channel. This specific date range was chosen because Tomoa Narasaki did not introduce the Tomoa Skip until 2018. In order to determine which climbers employed the Tomoa Skip, we slowed each video down to half speed or slower, giving us a more detailed view of each climber’s movements. Through this process, we examined 54 videos which amounts to over 108 hours of footage. Although our web scraper retrieved data for qualifying and final rounds, the IFSC only broadcasts the final rounds of speed climbing competitions. This necessitated the creation of a script that implemented our assumption that if a climber uses the Tomoa Skip in one round of an event, they will continue to use it in the future. For instance, if we have a documented occurrence of a climber using the Tomoa Skip in one event, looking ahead, if this climber doesn’t progress to a final round in future competitions we can still maintain a record indicating whether or not they utilized the skip. In order to avoid overgeneralizing, the script developed to implement this assumption takes into account the fact that some climbers may switch from using the Tomoa Skip to not using the Tomoa Skip. In this case, we simply perform the reverse action and assume that this climber will continue to not use the Tomoa Skip in any future competitions up until we have a record indicating otherwise. This case, however, is extremely rare, with only one climber in our records documented as having made this switch back. This data also contains climbers' ages at the time of each competition. This was computed from each climber’s date of birth. For climbers whose date of birth was only available as a year, we approximated their date of birth as January 1st of that year. Additionally, for certain climbers for whom only age information was available, we approximated their date of birth by subtracting their age from the current year. Once this data collection was complete, we ran a script to determine each climbers age at the time of each event that they competed in. To address the issue of missing values, which amounted to approximately 100 instances, we filled in the climber’s age with the average age of athletes within the respective event. Additionally, we implement a script to create a “time progression” variable within our dataset. This variable calculates the number of days since the first observed competition, providing a temporal context as well as sequencing to different events. Files and variables File: tomoa_skip_times.csv Description: Times for each climber in each speed competition from 2012-2022, including an indicator of when they use the Tomoa Skip beta. Variables * rank: The climber's place in the competition.* fname: The climber's first name.* lname: The climber's last name.* country: The climber's country.* best_qual: The climber's best qualification time at the competition.* final: The climber's best final time at the competition.* fall_qual: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the qualification round?* false_start_qual: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the qualification round?* fall_final: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the final round?* false_start_final: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the final round?* sex: The climber's sex.* event_id: The competition event id.* lane_a: Qualification time from Lane A.* lane_b: Qualification time from Lane B.* fall_lane_a: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the qualification round in Lane A?* false_start_lane_a: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the qualification round in Lane A?* fall_lane_b: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the qualification round in Lane B?* false_start_lane_b: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the qualification round in Lane B?* first_round: Final time in the first round of the final.* quarter: Final time in the quarter round of the final.* semi: Final time in the semi round of the final.* small_final: Final time in the small final.* big_final: Final time in the big final.* fall_first_round: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the first round of the final?* fall_quarter: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the quarter round of the final?* fall_semi: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the semi round of the final?* fall_small_final: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the small final?* fall_big_final: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber fall in the big final?* false_start_first_round: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the first round of the final?* false_start_quarter: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the quarter round of the final?* false_start_semi: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the semi round of the final?* false_start_small_final: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the small final?* false_start_big_final: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber false start in the big final?* tomoa_skip: TRUE/FALSE Did the climber use the Tomoa Skip beta at this event?* year: Year of the event.* start_date: Start date of the event.* end_date: End date of the event.* event: Event name.* dob: Birth date of the climber.* time_progression: An indicator of how many events to date the climber has competed in.* age: Age of the climber at the time of the event (approximate in some cases). Data Source & Legal Attribution Raw timing data compiled from public tournament results hosted by the World Climbing Organization, formerly the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC). This dataset is provided for informational/educational purposes only; original database structure and event rights remain with World Climbing/IFSC. The raw facts, athlete names, and event timing values contained in this dataset are historical sports statistics and public records. Original Rights Holder: All original branding, underlying database assembly structures, and tournament governance rights remain the exclusive intellectual property of the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC). Permitted Use: This dataset is compiled and hosted strictly for academic replication, non-commercial research, and educational analysis in accordance with fair use and open data science principles. The Tomoa Skip indicator was collected by watching recordings of competitions on YouTube and assessing the climber's beta manually. Recommended Citation for this Dataset If you use this compiled dataset for further research, please cite both the primary journal article and this data repository record.