HEADING
AIMING HIG H :
It was set to be a huge year: the disciplines of speed, lead, and boulder were ready to wow the crowd at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, but the Coronavirus pandemic fully hit, life went into lockdown and for the first time in history the Olympic Games were postponed.
GB CLIMBING
We have to search particularly hard to find the silver linings to this storm cloud and one of these is that our group responsible for the future of British Competition Climbing can use the downtime to start their important work on steering and developing the BMC’s work in managing competitions, supporting the Talent and performance pathways and helping GB Climbing squads at all levels.
GB Climbing is a newly formed internal department of the BMC designated with looking after and giving future direction to all things connected with Competition Climbing. The Competition Climbing Performance Group (CCPG) heads up GB Climbing and is formed of a group of experts who work with, advise and plan the future of GB Climbing. But what do we mean when we talk about competition climbing? Rab Carrington, Chair of the BMC CCPG, said: “It’s not just the Olympic disciplines. When we talk about Competition Climbing we mean all of the competitive disciplines: Lead, Boulder, Speed, Paraclimbing, Ice Climbing and Ski Mountaineering.” Having led the review group that was looking into the best way for
24 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
the BMC to develop competition climbing, held a variety of roles within the BMC to know the organisation inside and out, and with a huge number of connections in the outdoors industry, Rab is extremely well placed to help bring together the people needed to forge GB Climbing in the right direction. We asked him a few questions to discover more.
What was the most important change to competition climbing over the past 10 years?
Since 1987 climbers have always strived to improve through training. When I look back more than 10 years, the Brits who were competing in the days when competition climbing was starting in Europe – Ben Moon, Martin “Basher” Atkinson, Chris Gore and Jerry Moffatt – all of them are still to be found on the climbing scene today. I think that it is fairly remarkable that they are still making their mark, 30 years on. But today’s improved training techniques and indoor facilities have allowed climbers to develop strengths and abilities unimaginable back then.
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