Inspirational

I have just returned from four days at the World Cup inspired and psyched out of my tiny mind. Filled with ideas for getting young people and normal people and aspirant hard climbers to aspire to dizzy heights and enjoy the bliss of pulling harder than you ever thought you could.

Near five hundred youth from around the world arrived at EICA in Edinburgh to climb on the world stage. Now in Britain comp climbers get a lot of grief sometimes, frequently attacked with cynical swipes of 'What have they ever done outside' or 'I bet he couldn't do that at Malham' or some equally trite quip. I deplore this, I really do, because these people are not taking into account that someone has taken years and months to prepare to to express all of their training and hard work in a six minute window. No second chances, one shot. Competition climbing is a form of expression in the diverse church of climbing and to be overly critical based on deciding it is lesser because it is not outside is to misunderstand the whole art of competition climbing. What I can say is that in that environment, the British Team that I work with were brilliant, four made the semi finals in field where 8a onsight is the norm. Our team supported one another, climbed their hearts out in front of the world and were a slick professional unit.

It reinforced that climbing is a community of people with a shared passion. People prepared to cheer on their competitors, to mingle freely with people from other nations and to be inspired by the grace and style with which the person who just beat you did their route. If the United Nations could conduct themselves like the comp climbers I was privileged to spend four days with, our world would be a hell of lot better.

As for what have they done outside? The best onsight grade of any of the climbers I think was 8b+ and there were a fair few who had redpointed 9a outside, I lost count of the people who had redpointed 8c. This is girls and boys and across all the age ranges. Now is the bit where somebody says, 'Aye but that is long European fitness routes, all steep thuggery blah blah blah' and then moves on to cite some obscure Limestone route in Peak/Yorkshire with loads of invisible holds etc that nobody could ever onsight.

Anyway, enough rant from me - check out the brief review on the IFSC website:

">http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/?page_name=home&category_id=28&item=356