There’s a purity to sport climbing. By removing the need to protect a route during the ascent, the climber is free to focus on the puzzle posed by the rock before them. This puzzle is broadly the same for every entrant: get to the top, connecting a series of bolts as you go.
This makes comparing the greatest sport climbers in history a tad more straightforward than, say, comparing the world’s greatest mountaineers. The variables involved with getting to the top of any given route are fewer and more controllable. You either can climb it, joining the dots set out by whoever dreamed up the project, or you can’t.
