In just a few months, the young Czech climber Adam Ondra has conquered the world's two most difficult routes. With talk of an Olympic debut for his sport, is the skinny golden boy climbing's Usain Bolt?

Ten days ago, largely unnoticed by the media, Adam Ondra, a skinny 20-year-old from Brno in the Czech Republic, was sitting beneath a shield of rough, overhanging limestone at Oliana in Spain.

He had been trying the climb he was about to attempt for nine solid weeks, locked in a friendly duel with Chris Sharma, the laid-back but supremely talented American climber, who for15 years has been the world's top "sport" climber.

Beginning this 40-metre-high climb, Ondra admitted afterwards, his arms were sore and he felt "significantly weaker" than usual. With little expectation of succeeding, he barely managed the first few moves. Within a few minutes, however, it would be over. Two days after his birthday, Ondra had climbed what is widely acknowledged as the world's most difficult climb.

In the scheme of things in sport, if there is always someone running a bit faster, jumping further or climbing harder, the significance of the ascent of La Dura Dura – literally "the hard hard" – lies not in the climb itself but as part and parcel of the recent achievements of Ondra, who is to climbing what Usain Bolt is to sprinting – and who many now believe is ushering in a new "golden era" of climbing. With the sport being considered for the next summer Olympics – a move Ondra supports – it is a comparison that's apposite.

In the space of a few months, he has made first ascents of the world's two hardest climbs, the other being the extraordinary Flatanger cave in Norway, a vast, overhanging socket of overlapping granite roofs.

Recent ascents suggest that the young Czech achieved an unstoppable momentum – and all this in the first year that he has been able to climb full time after finishing school.

Already a two-time world climbing champion, on a recent trip to Kentucky's Red River Gorge, he underlined his claim to be the world's best by climbing two of America's hardest routes both on the first attempt, climbs that most of his peers might spend weeks attempting.

But where Ondra, whose bespectacled, geeky looks have drawn comparison with Harry Potter, excels is in sport climbing. Distinct from "traditional" climbing, sport climbing routes are protected by permanent bolts drilled into the rock at regular intervals, into which the rope is clipped as upward progress is made. It is this arrangement that allows the very hardest, tenuous and exhausting moves to be attempted in safety.

The British-based film-maker and photographer Lukasz Warzecha photographed Ondra competing in Italy in 2010 at an international bouldering competition, where climbers attempt short but very hard sequences unroped above foam mats. "The conditions were far from perfect," he recalled last week. "It had been raining and he'd put toilet paper on the holds to dry them out, which he plucked off. Most people weren't even getting off the ground, but he was managing incredibly hard problems.

"I remember only six years ago or so we were seriously asking how much harder people could climb. Whether it was possible. But he has taken it to a new level. Even for very good climbers it's like he's from another planet."

Stevie Haston, an outstanding British climber and mountaineer of a previous generation who is still climbing in his mid-50s, is another of those who has pondered the significance of Ondra's talent. In a profile for the Canadian climbing magazine Gripped, Haston described first hearing of Ondra when the Czech was only 12.

"Like a lot of old fogeys, I didn't want to believe what I was hearing, not just about Ondra but about rock climbing in general… What was crazy was that it was a practically pubescent kid from 'the arse end of the old eastern bloc', as the best climber in Britain put it.

"Paradoxically," Haston concluded, an important factor in his phenomenal a success "might be because he was so young".

What is now clear is that what those such as Haston were noticing was a transformation occurring in the sport of climbing. In the past, involvement in climbing typically began in the mid-teens and, in the era before the widespread availability of indoor climbing walls, outdoors.

The new generation, of which Ondra and America's Sasha DiGiulian would be a part, began climbing in early childhood. In this respect, it has followed the path that gymnastics followed, where ever-younger participants reach their pinnacle at a younger age. Indeed, the recent achievements of two 11-year-old girls – Brooke Rabatou and Ashima Shiraishi – suggest it is a process that has got a lot further to go.

Ondra's parents met through climbing. His first climb was at the age of three. By the age of nine, he had climbed 8a – a grade that for the vast majority of climbers would signify an unreachable attainment. He recalled those first climbing experiences in a 2010 interview with Vojtech Vrzba and Jack Geldard. "I started climbing thanks to my parents, who have been going with me on the rocks since I was a baby. Naturally, I wanted to try it, so I tried my first climbing moves at the age of three or maybe four, but I started climbing more frequently at the age of six. I felt the strongest impulse to climb when I entered my first competitions."

In interviews Ondra has made no bones about his determination to succeed. That is most visible in video footage of Ondra climbing, particularly his attempts on La Dura Dura with Sharma before his successful ascent earlier this month. Ondra's efforts are inevitably accompanied by a soundtrack of grunts and screams as he wills himself through the hardest sequences with an almost diabolic determination. When he takes a long fall on to the rope, it is accompanied by howls of frustration.

Of his habit of screaming on hard ascents, he told journalist Peter Beal last year: "I shriek when I am climbing at my absolute limit, but never shriek in the warm-up or when trying the moves. No matter how terrible it might sound, it helps me." Indeed, Ondra's theory is that shouting – expelling the air from his lungs as he begins the hardest moves – helps him through his difficulties. And in a sport that has produced some enormous egos, he appears to wear that mantle lightly, although he concedes there may be some truth in the claim that he's currently the world's best.

Ondra achieved most of this as a student while being ferried around until recently by his parents. He has admitted that difficult "traditional" climbs, where there's risk of a serious ground fall, are of little interest. "I do not climb really dangerous stuff," he said in a recent Q&A. "It is not worth it."

Late last year, in an interview with America's Outside magazine, Ondra described the mental process of attempting the world's hardest routes as being as crucial to success as his physical training. "I usually reach a certain state of mind when I know that it's possible, but from this point it can last one day, or it can last three weeks, or it can last years until the point where I [succeed]. This process of waiting for the day when everything clicks, when you are perfectly rested and perfectly motivated, is really frustrating. While working on Change [his recent climb in Norway], these mental difficulties were the toughest I've ever experienced."

In another interview for PlanetMountain, Ondra was even more forthright about the mental component. "I had changing states of mind, of confidence, of mood... Sometimes I felt good, sometimes not. The more I thought about my process, the more confused I got and the more my confidence ebbed."

Although Ondra admits he is not, physically, the strongest climber in a world where every climbing gym seems to have someone able to do one-finger pull-ups, he compensates with the speed and efficiency of his movement, his feet in particular appearing glued to nothing.

His recent ascents have gone some way towards fulfilling the assessment that he made in an interview with a Czech website – "Today's hardest routes are far below the human maximum."

Ondra has managed to fit this all in around his academic studies. He has said he intends to go to university after a couple of years devoting himself full time to climbing. With his eye already set on bigger, longer and harder projects, last week's climb will perhaps be seen in the future as marking the beginning, rather than the peak, of an already remarkable series of achievements.