Lead now has its own rankings, forecasts and methodology, covering 2021 to 2026.

A lead result says how far a climber got, so the model works one move at a time. Each climber has a rating, and each route gets harder as it goes up. Some moves are far harder than their neighbours, and those cruxes are shared by everyone on the route, which is why a whole field can fall at the same hold. On top of that a climber can be sharp for a weekend, or just suit one route.

2026

Neo Suzuki is the top-rated man at 2884 (2774 to 2996). Putra Tri Ramadani, Alberto Ginés López, Satone Yoshida and Sorato Anraku follow, and their ranges overlap heavily.

Janja Garnbret leads the women’s ranking at 2911 (2773 to 3066), ahead of Annie Sanders and Chaehyun Seo.

Ai Mori has the highest women’s rating, 2972, but it rests on four routes at one event and its range runs from 2631 to 3366. A rating on that little evidence should not sit at the top of a ranking, so climbers with fewer than 8 routes in a season are shown greyed and without a rank.

Do the forecasts work?

We tested forecasts on 62 competitions at 31 events from 2024 to 2026: 20,518 predictions. All of them were computed afterwards, refitting the model on only what was known at each stage. None was posted in advance, so this is a backtest, not a live record.

Forecasts are close to what happened. Things given a 9% chance happened 9.5% of the time, and things given 60% happened 61%. Pre-event skill over a base rate was +53% for reaching a semi, +40% for a final, +38% for the podium and +28% for the winner.

Getting there took a fix worth describing. Early versions badly underrated long shots, with climbers given under 5% reaching semis about four times as often as forecast. We assumed the cause was form. It was mostly climbers the model had never seen, who were being started far too low. Setting their starting point from earlier debutants closed most of the gap.

Two limits remain. Long shots reaching finals still came in about twice as often as forecast on 2024 and 2025, though not on 2026, and debutants are now slightly overrated. The other is more humbling: ranking climbers on their rating alone does about as well as simulating the whole event, so the value is in the ratings, not the simulation.

The real test starts next season, when forecasts can be posted before the climbing.