In reply to john arran:
There has always been British competition climbers who achieve top results in international events. What seems to happen in the UK is we have at least 1 good comp climber who gets great results when they are a kid then they don't get the transition into international senior level competitions and they generally then stop competing...
Whereas other countries such as Austria, Slovenia, France, Germany, Russia, etc... their young climbers transcend into the seniors and achieve good results and then have an extra 10-15 years of competing on the world circuit.
We have NEVER had a competitor do this in at least the last 10 years. I know we had good senior comp climbers years and years ago e.g. Simon Nadin, but they didn't do junior comps so it wasn;t like they had a transition from junior team.
Shauna is the only one I can think of but she never really transitioned from her original discipline of Lead (difficulty) when she was a kid because now she does bouldering...
Tom Bolger won European Cup Round but never went onto compete seriously internationally (no funding for it)
Natalie Berry is the same... Won European Cup Round, no funding to go to international events and a lack of structure of senior team lead to not competing at international level
Kitty Wallace won European Cup Round as well
Ed Hamer currently operating at an insane level and achieved amazing results at Junior level international competitions but hasn't transitioned to senior...
I guess there is just little funding for Senior competition climbers and no structure for a team (or not that I have heard of so don't quote me on that). It's a shame because we have always had really good kids that have enormous potential at senior level... then they kind of just get let go and drift off into something else... usually rock climbing (great!!!)
But it would be cool to see a British Senior Team...
