Competition climbing is now an Olympic recognised sport and it is short listed for inclusion in the 2020 Olympics. This is an exciting development for the ever growing sport of indoor climbing. It is an honour to represent my country in my chosen sport, and to see it included in the Olympics would be great for the competitors and the sport in general.
The question is - what inspires us to compete?
I do not compete to get attention, however it is nice to get recognition for achievement. I have a blog to promote competition climbing, the British Climbing Team and climbing in general.
In bouldering many of the competitors, myself included, compete due to enjoying the challenge of working out and topping short, hard, technical problems. We are competing against the challenge of the boulder and seek new challenges on a regular basis. The competition must be on manmade boulders as it would be unfair to compete on natural rock as the competitors may have been on it before so wouldn’t have to work it out on the spot. Also, considerable damage would likely be caused to any natural rock environment if a competition was held in it.
But why compete against others, rather than just the boulder problem? Well, it’s natural to compete with each other – it happens all the time at the climbing wall and it’s human nature. If I can’t top a problem I work at it, I want to beat it if possible. If someone else can top it, then it is possible and I maybe try harder, try and work out what I am doing differently. Do I lack the strength, power, flexibility, endurance, savvy etc to top it?
When put in a competitive environment, adrenaline comes into play. I find I can do moves that I cannot always repeat outside of the competition. It helps me in the challenge of beating the boulder.
Bouldering can be very sociable. Through competitions, I have met many fantastic characters. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit some amazing places, despite climbing on plastic!
Oh, and it feels good to do well and even better to win!
