UKC

Firstly, Stand me corrected if my rant is incorrect!

I recently had a five number touch on the national lottery (not as much as you'd hope) and started to give it some serious consideration as to what I could spend millions on?? (1 number off 7.5 million).

One of the things I came up with is helping the British Bouldering Team with their shenanigans. I concluded this for two reasons.

1, Last year Shauna Coxey was nearly prevented from competing because of a knee injury. She only managed to compete as the Austrian physio helped her out. Fair play to the Austrian physio and thanks but this is a travesty that the British team had non of this kind of support. If this had been athletics....

2, This year Mina set up a web page asking for an £8000 donation from the public to enable the whole team to even get to the World Cup. I know the reason was because a main sponsor liquidated but I cant recall Jessica Ennis ever having to do anything similar.

After having this conversation with some people "in the know" I was led to believe this lack of funding is partly due to the guy that runs the BMC. And his reasoning for this (again, I will stand corrected) is that he is a bit fuddy duddy about this new age indoor climbing malarkey and is not keen on anything outside of the traditional so doesn't give it the full attention it merits?? If this is true then I think its a terrible shame. Britain have 2 women in the top 10 world ranking and numerous men and Women in the top 20, surely these guys should have the support they deserve??

In reply to UrbanSteve:

I don't know which individual you mean but I doubt that's the case, I'm pretty sure one person doesn't control all the budget and is able to do it without considering the wishes of the membership


Where, exactly, is the merit for the majority of the membership of giving the indoor bouldering team more money? Personally I think the BMC should be able to discressionarily give money to successful competitors, like Shauna and Mina, but the BMC is a broad church and to do that they'd have to take the money from elsewhere. There are probably many more sub paying hill walkers in the BMC than there are people whose main interest is indoor bouldering, I don't know if that is reflected in where the BMC spend goes, do you?

In reply to Tyler:

Well said Tyler.

In reply to Tyler:

I'm sorry, my point wasn't very clear. I do not mean that the BMC should solely fund the boulder team as I am aware they do the best they can with the limited funds they receive.

Surely though the BMC could do more to raise the profile of these athletes which could bring them government or council funding. Imagine what they could achieve if they had this. Whilst competition climbing is a somewhat underground sport it is gathering pace and could use a bit of help to bring it to the forefront so it starts to get some recognition.

Look at what has been achieved in some mainstream sports helped along by massive investment. There seems to be resistance to promote because bouldering doesn't tick the old skool box (I am aware what said climbers have done on Grit).

I wasn't looking for a squabble in saying any of this, I just wondered what others tought to there lack of funding and if their was more the BMC could do to help.

In reply to UrbanSteve:

Erm, I'm assuming you were asleep last year when the BMC were energetically supporting the bid to get competition climbing into the Olympics? They were taking quite a pasting for it from some people on here who suspected them of having been taken over by a shadowy cabal of competition climbing enthusiasts and vested interests and who thought they should get back to dealing with "real" climbing...