Gravity no barrier in speed climbing - the Olympics' quickest sport

On Thursday afternoon thousands of people spilled into the Site d’Escalade to witness the world’s best go for gold in the speed version of rock climbing. This is basically a series of races between two competitors up a pair of identical 15-metre walls rigged with protrusions. And they do it at breakneck speed

Italy's Beatrice Colli, left, competes against Spain's Leslie Adriana Romero Perez in the women's sport climbing speed preliminary round heats

It would be a surprise if even a handful of the Irish hordes that helped fill the Velodrome in Marseille for the opening game of the Six Nations last February stumbled across the Arkose Prado hidden away down an innocuous laneway and no more than the kick of a ball from the stadium.

The Arkose Prado is a restaurant (and it sells cracking burgers and fries with a beer for a very reasonable price) but it’s also a rock-climbing centre. This might seem like a strange hybrid of a business, but it is very French and it speaks for how embedded a sport virtually unknown in Ireland can be elsewhere.