KEENE – In four years at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, atop the podium for the first time will be a rock climber.

The inclusion of sport climbing – a form of rock climbing – at the Olympics is seen as a breakthrough for the sport to many. Medals will be awarded via a combined point system of three disciplines: lead climbing, speed climbing and bouldering.

At the forefront of the movement to get climbing into the games has been the international “Climb 2020” campaign. During the opening seconds of Climb 2020’s YouTube documentary “The Olympic Opportunity,” there is a dramatic aerial shot zooming in from waves cascading on a seafront to a man with a chalk bag scaling a near vertical cliff.

Then, in a flash, the video transitions to quick cuts of young people competing at indoor sport climbing gyms, to the tune of electronic dance music.

For a sport with an element of traditional wilderness activity, like that seen here in the Adirondacks, and another element as a popular commercialized sport, the 2020 Olympics present quite the rift between past and future for rock climbing.

“We didn’t really want to fracture the climbing world between its different countries and have some countries actively proposing against having climbing in the Olympics,” Ian Dunn, Great Britain team manager and coach said in the documentary. “We wanted to have a harmonious proposal.”

The resulting proposal by the International Federation of Sport Climbing resulted in an Olympic version of the sport that shares similarities with how rugby was included for the first time in decades at this summer’s Rio Games.

The IOC approved a smaller version of the game, Rugby 7s. The downsizing of rugby for Olympic inclusion is the latest in an approach where the IOC is more keen on versions of sports where the resulting competition is more efficient to host and, theoretically, more attractive to watch.

A smaller game is also expected for lacrosse if it were to ever become an Olympic sport, Lake Placid Summit Lacrosse Founder and U.S. Lacrosse’s Board of Directors member George Leveille said last month.

But for some people in the rock climbing world, this Olympic template of tinkering with a sport is not necessarily welcome. The fear is that the Olympics will misrepresent the activity they love and what it’s about.

“It’s like comparing miniature golf to traditional golf,” said R.L. Stolz, the owner of Alpine Adventures in Keene since 1985. “That’s the way that climbers look at it.

“That kind of competition doesn’t interest me. I won’t be watching it closely. I’ll probably be out climbing is where I’ll be.”

Dunn expressed concern about the version of the sport at the 2020 Olympics as well, preferring more medals to satisfy different preferences for climbing.

“I think once you have actually gained access to the Olympic ideal then I think the chance of possibly changing something could be there in the future,” he said in the documentary.

Adirondack climbing couldn’t be further from the Olympic sport. What draws many to the region is traditional rock climbing, as the park’s most popular routes are unblemished by overly-chalked holds or tick marks. More than 850 of 1,320 climbing routes here are classified as “traditional” by Mountain Project.com, a global climbing community. Mountain Project lists only 173 Adirondack sport climbing routes.

Ed Palen, owner of Adirondack Rock and River guide service in Keene, sees a difference between Europe and here in the U.S., where competitive sport climbing tours failed to catch on in the ’80s.

Noting Russia’s love for speed climbing, Palen described the proposed Olympic event as gymnastics compared to what’s done here in the Adirondacks. From a technical, judgment and risk perspective, it’s different than the Olympic sport, which he dubbed “pulling plastic.”

“They want to make it the most fun spectator sport,” he said. “It’s unrelated to rock climbing. It’s different skills – nothing to do with rocks to tell you the truth.”