Climbing in the Olympics 2006

Mike Doyle gives us a quite sad story from how he and our sport
took part in the Torino Olympics as a demonstration sport. Climbing
is one of the fastest growing sport nowadays but if we want to be
part of the Olympics we probably need to change our competition
format as many other sports do. Here is some suggestions from 8a.

As many of you know the international federation for competition
climbing (UIAA-Climbing) was asked to hold some climbing
demonstrations during the Olympics in Bardonecchia, site of the
Olympic snowboarding events. The Mayor of Bardonecchia was able to
secure housing for 10 climbers at a time so the UIAA invited 30
climbers from around the world and cycled them through for the 16 days
of Olympic competition. I was in the first group and here are my
impressions of what went on and how climbing was received.

The first group was definitely the most international with climbers
from four different continents. There were two climbers from Asia (Lei
Zhao - China, Lai Zhao Cheng - Hong Kong), two more from Australia
(Christina Bedard, Alan Pryce), three from North America (Mike Doyle -
Canada, Vadim Vinokur - USA, Emily Harrington - USA) and four from
Europe( Jorg Verhoven - Netherlands, Magnus Midtboe - Norway, Angela
Eiter - Austria, Killian Fischhuber - Austria). Fortunately everyone
spoke english so we were all able to communicate.

None of us really knew what to expect when we arrived in Italy; Would
the Olympics be a party? Would lots of people watch the climbing? Were
we competing against each other? How cold would it really be? And the
most important question, would competition climbing benefit from this
event?

We all hoped that competition climbing would benefit and the
individual climbers made different sacrifices to be there. Some
changed road trip plans and paid their own way, some skipped school
and some took time of work to travel to Italy for a week.
Unfortunately I have to say that for the first group I'm not sure
competition climbing did benefit.

We were scheduled to climb twice a day with open climbing in the
morning and then a demonstration in the evening. It turned out there
was no difference as we would just end up climbing together and
sessioning. While it was a great time meeting everyone and climbing
around I'm sure it wasn't that exciting to watch. Imagine 10 people
scrambling around on boulders on one side of a huge room. People would
poke their heads in, stay for a bit and then leave. I'm guessing not
more than 20 people watched us in the week we were there. I was hoping
for more of a demonstration of climbing, maybe a mock competition or
at least something more exciting to watch.

As I said I was in the first group and I had hoped that things would
pick up after I left. Obviously the town and the athletes around were
pre-occupied with the Olympics. Unfortunately according to Maja Vidmar
things were pretty slow when she was there as well. She was in the
last group.

At least we had access to that amazing Itallian coffee and table tenis
(which China dominated)! The hospitality that the city showed us was
great and we were treated to the Male Snowboarding Halfpipe
competition so that was pretty cool. Although 6 hours of seeing guys
doing roughly the same thing was a bit much for all of us.

Nobody in the UIAA has any illusions about climbing becoming an
Olympic sport quickly. They understand that the sport still needs to
grow at the grassroots level in many countries. I would say that is
the biggest thing I took away from this event. The desire to help
bring competition climbing mainstream in Canada first. Now if only I
could quit my job...

For a slightly different perspective check out Debbie Glowach's report
here: http://www.usaclimbing.org/resources/2006_usac_olympics_report.pdf

Mike Doyle