Competition Climbing Set for World Games in Taiwan

Should climbing be a sport in the Olympic Games? It’s a question that’s been debated for twenty years now since the first climbing World Cup in 1989. Competition climbing, no longer an infant sport, has made long strides toward legitimacy.

Later this month the city of Kaosiung, Taiwan will host the World Games, an athletic competition under the supervision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for all the fringe and niche sports that yearn to be included in the Olympic Games. Over 35 sports are included in this year’s sporting purgatory including such arcane pursuits as korfball, flying disc, orienteering, tug-of-war, and competition climbing.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing is pushing for climbing’s inclusion in the 2020 Olympic Games at a still undecided city. Will it get the nod? Hard to know. Squash will probably get a go-ahead for the 2016 games so climbing wouldn’t be included unless it was simply an exhibition. The IOC likes some of the alternative X-Games sports like snowboarding, which proved immensely popular at the Olympics, but climbing kind of flopped at the X-Games.

I worked for several years at the X-Games for Jim Waugh, the climbing organizer, and it was a constant battle for him to keep climbing in the mix. First lead climbing was dropped. The venue was too expensive and frankly the slow and steady pace didn’t make for great television. As more than one wag said, “It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry!”

Bouldering was adopted in San Francisco. It was exciting with hard problems and big plunges off the plywood boulders but it too was dropped like a screaming leader fall. Which left only speed climbing. Okay, speed climbing looks good on television. It’s also simple—just two climbers racing each other up a 100-foot wall. But the venue was just too expensive for the few minutes of air time it received so it finally got the boot too.

When I was a board member of the American Sport Climbing Federation (ASCF) in the 1990s, part of our mission was to work toward climbing’s inclusion in the highest competition, the Olympic Games. USA Climbing, now the governing body for competition climbing in the United States, holds the same goal, saying on their website, “The Olympic Games! They are within reach of USA Climbing. Just like the finish hold on a route, this is our sport’s ultimate goal.” A lofty aim, but probably not within reach in the foreseeable future, especially since USA Climbing only qualified two Americans, both women, for the World Games and no big names like Chris Sharma.

Climbing has always been participatory recreation rather than an overtly competitive sport so it remains to be seen how much interest climbers and more importantly, climbing companies with money like North Face or Patagonia would have to support competition climbing. In the 1990s competition climbing in the United States was dirt poor. There were few major sponsors for events. It’s hardly changed in the past decade.

If a flood of money did come into competition climbing, the big question is how would it be spent? Looking at the finances of other small sports, most of it would be spent on only a few athletes, coaches, as well as the administrators.

Richard Hunkler at Slippery Rock University wrote an article Seven Deadly Sins Leaders of Sports Federations Should Avoid! that was published in waterpoloplanet.com. His second sin is Lust, which he defines as “the disproportionate craving for the pleasure of satisfying one goal.” Hunkler says if a federation has a goal, it should be “then make it something that will truly benefit the entire membership day in and day out – say, a goal such as spending 100% of our time, money, and energy in trying to have as many youth in this country playing water polo as there are playing soccer.”

So lots of interesting questions about competition climbing and the Olympics. What is your opinion? Go to the Climbing Forum and let me know your thoughts. In the meantime, good luck to Mykael Ann McGinley and Tiffany Hensley, the two American climbers in this year’s World Games.

Photograph top: Are medal stands the future of climbing? Tori Allen after winning gold at the 2002 women’s speed climbing event at the X-Games. Photograph © Stewart M Green