UKC

The IFSC Africa and Oceania Continental Championships took place simultaneously this weekend in Cape Town, South Africa and Sydney, Australia last weekend. The final four Olympic quota places for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were awarded to the winning climbers in each category, bringing the total number of qualified Sport Climbing athletes to 40.

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Out of interest what is the barrier to wider participation in the competition in Africa - is it costs, pandemic constraints or just that no other African countries have any competition climbers because people don't have the opportunity to take it up? Have there been any previous competitions at continental level?

I appreciate climbing is far less accessible to Africans than to most of the world, but I'm not sure just how inaccessible. eg, would I find a climbing wall in any or most African capital cities?

Apparently the only people who climb in Africa are White South Africans.

Except for the Ugandans who participated......

Yes, it was always going to be south Africans who dominated the comp, Africa is weak relative to other continents. If the comp had taken place under "normal " circumstances there would have been more , but there are still travel restrictions in place. At least it's a start for the continent.

I've lived in Sierra Leone for the last 3 years. The small bouldering wall we set up is the only one in West Africa. Excluding South Africa, the only other countries I'm aware of that have anything are Malawi, Kenya and Morocco - but even those are pretty basic facilities that you probably wouldn't bother going to in the UK.

The barriers to getting to Olympic level in any country other than South Africa are practically insurmountable as things currently stand.

Thanks for the info, definitely answers the question!

And except for Katleho Pobe.

The Ugandans had never been on the speed wall until the day before the comp. Credo got to about hold 6 during the comp and Simon managed to get to the top, 89 seconds during practice, then getting it down to 52 seconds during the qualification.

They had never led a route indoors before they arrived in RSA.

They said that it was an amazing learning experience and loved the support given by the South African athletes, ther was a great image of one of the South Africans helping Simon read the route in the lead qualification.

It's be really great if Scotlands 'twinning' with Malawi, could see a mentoring roll for it's climbers, maybe even get them here to train on our facilites ahead of the next olympic qualification rounds.  

Hi Nat,

Just to be a coomplete pedant, the 4 athletes that won the 4 gold medals over the weekend are still provisionally qualified. They are need to receive and accept the invitations. And they aren't Olympians until they have competed at the Olympics

Access to the South African facilities seems not to be in reach for the Black majority of the population.

Cheers Graeme. I put provisional in the results section, will add to intro too. Yeah I know it usually means someone who's already competed, but it's also convenient for short headlines! Will add 'Future'.

Hope you had a good time. Looked a great event!

And that is how it starts off! Chapeau to the ugandans for having the balls to turn up and give it a go, and I hope they keep it up!

Hopefully over time the SA facilities will be within reach of ever more of their population.

The flip side of this, from what I saw of the comp, is that people are getting Olympic places based on routes that wouldn't split climbers in YCS.   There's 7a/b climbers getting a spot when 9a/b climbers are not.   When they come up against boulders designed to be hard for the best in the world they'll be out their depth.

That's implicit in the whole global inclusivity thing, which is both worthy in itself and <cynic> important for the IOC's commercial goal of selling TV rights in as many countries as possible </cynic>.

If the selection criteria were actually to include the best competition climbers, then it would just be a Japan-Slovenia showdown of limited interest to TV audiences elsewhere. Over-simplifying a bit obviously.

It's the Olympics, not a World Championship. I bet there were a few Finns and Austrians who were more than marginally better than Eddie the Eagle, but nobody complained. 

They did complain and the qualification rules were changed to limit Olympic competitors that had finished within the top 30% or top 50, whichever is smaller. Perhaps why the Oceanic and African champions are provisionally qualified?

Not so sure about out of their depth, but i get where you are coming from; they certainly wont win - Chris Cosser has competed at world cup / youth world champs level, Erin not so much, but shes only 17. What they are is flag wavers for the future, in what is the introduction of comp climbing to the olympics. 

Not sure why the dislikes, though, unless i'm missing something. Didn't seem much of a controversial post to me.......

Where did you get that from because it is totally wrong. The provisional qualification is because the athletes have to be invited and accept.

I think he's referring to the ski jumpers complaining, so they tightened the standards for entry for all competitors. Eddie wouldnt get there today.

but yes to the reason the african / oceanean climbers provi status.

I thought of the Eddie the Eagle analogy but didn't use it because although he came last by miles at the Olympics he wasn't actually that bad.  He placed 55th at a World Championship in Germany to qualify for the Olympics.  He had a background in skiing and was training pretty hard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_the_Eagle

A routesetter, sponsored climber, or one of the best comp climbing kids at a large wall in the UK would do laps on some of those routes.  It isn't 55th in the world standard, probably not 55th in Sheffield. 

It's the first time for climbing and good to see it develop in Africa but I think some kind of rule like other minority sports have is going to be necessary in the future or we will get people exploiting it as a way to go to the Olympics.

Not watched it but presumably only white South Africans at the event.

That's quite a contrast from the apartheid era - when the Cape Town area's climbing came to the world's notice, two of the leading proponents were Ed January & Ed February - neither of whom were white. The impression I got from articles at the time was that in the Cape Town area, apartheid didn't generally count amongst climbers, however this may have partly been because Cape Town was always more liberal in that respect than other areas.

But I think one of the great things about the Olympics was that if you were a country's best at a sport, you could compete at the Olympics even if you were nowhere near world class.

Has that changed?

Clearly the selection system for most sports does not allow every country to send someone to the Olympics.

For climbing, with the very limited number of places this is obviously true e.g. most EU countries will not have a climber at the Olympics.

No, see my comment about KP

So Colin Duffy from the USA shouldn't be going because his world ranking is worse than the South African guy who only came 3rd at the African Champs.

Oops, ambiguity - I meant that the only South Africans there were white South Africans, not that the only competitors there were white South Africans 😁

I don't remember Colin Duffy's name and apparently you don't remember the name of the South African guy.  However,  there are a few regular IFSC finalists that we both know the name of, who could walk up the routes in the African championship and who, if they got to the Olympics, might even have a shot at a medal that aren't getting to go.

I was very careful not to say what was done this year was wrong because I see the advantage of bringing a new continent into the sport.  My point is it is not sustainable and in the future our sport needs similar rules to other sports to maintain a minimum standard for participation at the Olympics.  It's for guys like you to figure out what the rules should be.   

Just look at the pictures in the article and you can see the difference in holds between the African and Australian competition.

Interesting convo which I kinda hinted at first on the previous announcement. Anyhow to bring a couple of other curveballs in please consider

Eddie was at least competing in a sport that although it took great skill, it was never going to be dull.  Dead Eddie or semi successful Eddie.  We were going to get a result as long as he took part.

Does anyone remember the swimmer who was at best a complete beginner,  he/she got cheered to the end of their race which was about 2 or 3 x longer due to slow swimming.  Again the crowd joined in and the Olympic spirit of support and involvement could be joined in by all.

The thing that worries me on this is climbing needs to provide a spectacle at this olympics to generate interest.  A climber walking up to a wall and pulling only to fall straight away is not going to generate much Olympic spirit. There is a lot of technical and physical aspects that joe average just will not be able to bridge. It is quite an anticlimax to see IMO.  As I commented elsewhere, the setters are going to have a very important job

Not "most", sure, but 8 out of 27 ain't bad: France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Poland, Germany, Czech. Plus GB, Russia & Switzerland if you mean "Europe" rather than "the EU"

I thought (e.g.) running events have a cut-off time? So you can be your country's champion as much as you like, but if you're not fast enough you're still not in?

KP is South African

And jolly good at cricket!

Yes I realised that after a brief scan through the various videos. Marmalota's original comment (which started this little chain) was misinformed.

Although KP didn't do that well, he still flashed one of the boulders that gave most of them a problem.

That's why it should be DWS only.  With shark festooned water.

I think Adam Ondra and Jacob Schubert would disagree as would Chaehyun Seo (South Korea) and Jessie Pilz.  The female competition is arguably dominated by Slovenia and Japan but the male definitely isn't. 

The UK is arguably losing out with climbers like Molly Thomson-Smith and Will Bosi, 8th in Europe and maybe somewhere in the 10-15 range on world rankings, finding that is not quite enough to get a spot in the Olympics.  If the system was simply top 30 male and top 30 female in the world and at most two male/female from any country, they'd both be in easily.   

From the point of view of TV audiences and economics you'd do better having a competitive climber from a rich country like UK/France/Germany/Italy where advertisers can sell stuff.   So I don't think this is an economic or TV audience decision.  It's either altruistic or about the politics of getting approved as an Olympic sport depending on how cynical you are.

I was over simplifying on purpose to convey my suprise when looking at the roster of the African cup and finding it whiter than I expected.

If it is due to travel restrictions rhat is sad, vut otherwise it says lots about the Colour gap of the OIlympics. In fairness I expect that almost all European competitors will have a upper middle class background as well.

For the Olympic participation, imho, diversity should be the most important criteria by far. As others said it 's not the world cup.

Fair enough.

Although apartheid has gone, I'm pretty sure that (on average) being white in South Africa still gives a significant material advantage and that will equate into access to leisure activities like climbing. So the diversity not matching the background population is not really surprising - I mean just look at their rugby and cricket teams. SA's still got a long way to go (but at least it got out of apartheid without a bloodbath - which I believe is largely down to Nelson Mandela's calm and reconciliatory attitude).

The Olympics has unfortunately become bloated by the pursuit of money - too many sports where the Olympics is not the pinnacle but merely another trophy (e.g. tennis). There are very few sports in it that are truly diverse - maybe athletics is the only one. Anyway, enough of me ranting off at a tangent 😁

I have loads of respect for Molly and Will's ability, but that's an extremely optimistic take. Did you watch the recent European comp?

Bits of it.

I don't think it's that optimisitic to say someone who makes 8th in European championships and occasionally gets finals in IFSC will be in top 30 in the world.   It's all a bit difficult to judge at the moment because of Covid and different people having different training levels with almost no comps.  Will was 9th in IFSC combined rankings in 2019.