By Paul Martin at Le Bourget.

A thrilled Toby Roberts was left ‘really psyched’ by a strong finish to the first stage of his Olympic debut.

The 19-year-old climbing sensation from Elstead finished third in his boulder semi-final, with the lead semi-final to follow on Wednesday – scores are then combined and the top eight make Friday’s final.

Roberts feels lead is his stronger discipline and will hope to take the momentum from his final climb when he scaled the summit to score 24.7 from a possible 25 to bring the capacity crowd in Le Bourget to its feet.

“I was really psyched to get the last one,” he said.

“I definitely felt a bit of pressure going out to the last boulder, I thought I might have to top it to be in a good place. I was able to calm down in the cool zone and put in a good performance.

“You have to keep your mind as you don’t know what other people are topping, it’s easy to think ‘I didn’t get that, maybe someone else did’.

“You just have to keep your head and process it as you go.

“Nothing beats climbing in front of a crowd like this, when they get behind you it’s amazing.”

Roberts’ participation in Paris is the culmination of an eight-year plan devised when sport climbing was announced as an addition to the Olympic programme, at which point he was 12.

He had his family, including dad and coach Tristian, in the crowd to see the dream come true and appears to have realistic medal prospects, with eight World Cup medals – including four golds – under his belt in the last two years.

But the teenager is not getting ahead of himself with plenty of work still to do.

“The first step is to get to the final and to do that I have to put a solid lead performance in,” he said.

“My focus is all on the next step. On the stage, I’m pretty good at focusing on what I’ve got to do. I definitely had some butterflies beforehand, but I was able to control it.”

The bouldering stage of boulder and lead is made up of four walls which climbers have five minutes to navigate.

Points are determined by progress up or along the wall, with five points for reaching the first zone, 10 for the second and 25 for the top – with 0.1 points deducted for every unsuccessful attempt to reach the next scoring position.

Roberts, who scored 54.1 from a possible 100, is loving life in the athlete’s village and is keeping himself busy when not competing by collecting pin badges from as many different countries as possible.

“It’s really cool,” he said. “I’ve been there for six days, and it’s flown by.

“It’s like a resort, you walk around in your sliders, chilling out, everyone’s vibing.

“Then you come to your event, and you realise this is the Olympics, I’m here to compete.

“The scale is just so much bigger than what I’m used to. I’m really excited.”

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