PORTLAND — Rock climbing is considered a new sport in the Summer Olympics. At Evo Rock + Fitness, sport climbing, as the competition is officially called, is already well-established.
Still, the Maine climbing community hopes the Paris Games can bring the sport to new heights.
Since opening in 2015, the Portland gym has offered sport climbing classes and hosted local competitions. But in recent years, the sport has seen a different level of engagement.
“With the Olympics in 2021, and after the pandemic, we saw a big influx of people who are interested in (sport climbing),” Trevor Bostic, Evo’s general manager, said. “I would say climbing as a sport has traditionally been kind of an alternate type of sport, less mainstream. But now with more and more exposures, you’re seeing more and more traditionally athletic people excel in this sport.”
Sport climbing consists of three different disciplines — bouldering, lead and speed.
Bouldering involves a climber trying to maneuver from Point A to Point B on 15-foot wall without any ropes, during which climbers can find themselves upside down or leaping between holds. They have three minutes to earn points as they pass through set zones on their way to completing each route, also known as problems. In competition, there are four problems of varying difficulty, each worth 25 points, totaling up to 100 possible points.
Lead climbing, or rope climbing, is the other half of the Olympics’ combined event. Climbers have one six-minute-long attempt to scale a 15-meter (49 feet) wall of 40 holds. As the climber passes each hold, they lead their rope through a carabiner to mark where they have been. The more holds a climber reaches, which become more difficult as the climb progresses, the more points they can score, up to a total of 100.
Speed climbing is a bit easier to understand: get to the top as fast as possible. While strapped into an automatic belay system, climbers race their way up a 15-meter, five-degree inclined wall. Each climber will race on the left side and the right side of the International Sports Climbing Federation standardized wall, striving for the fastest time to create seeding. From there, a single-elimination bracket is formed where fastest climber is paired with the slowest climber (and so-forth) for a head-to-head race and the fastest time advances.
At its face, sport climbing may seem similar to the indoor rock climbing found at Evo, or a good simulation of what outdoor climbers may face, but according to Bostic, sport climbing is more of a spectacle.
“A big problem with climbing that we’re going through, or trying to figure out as the sport evolves, is how do we make it accessible to viewers? Particularly, viewers who don’t rock climb,” Bostic said. “The reality is, a lot of your more intense, outdoorsy style rock climbing isn’t all that exciting to watch. It’s a guy grabbing a really small hold and pulling on it really hard until he grabs the next really small hold and moves his foot up. That doesn’t generally get the uninitiated viewer excited. Whereas some of these more parkour style moves where you’re running and you’re jumping and you’re doing multiple coordination with different limbs, you know, people can see that and go, ‘Wow, that’s exciting.’”
It is certainly exciting enough for live spectators in Paris, as Le Bourget Climbing Venue has been full of fans during world record speed climbs from Sam Watson of the United States (4.75 seconds for men’s record) and the first female gold medalist Aleksandra Miroslaw of Poland (6.10 seconds). It is also still entertaining enough for fans in Maine to appreciate on tape delay.
“It’s really crazy to watch some of these people climb,” Wiley Kemp of Westbrook, a climber at Evo, said. “They’re just unbelievably strong.”
Kate Bergmann of Windham and Will Covert of Portland are members of Evo and have been climbing for seven years, but neither was really familiar with speed climbing until the Tokyo Olympics.
“It brings a lot more people into the sport,” Covert said. “It makes it more viable. The Olympics totally legitimizes it.”
“People actually know what climbing is, compared to 10 years ago,” Bergmann said.
There haven’t been many instances of people walking through the gym doors and saying they wanted to start climbing because of the Olympics. Kemp says he started climbing again around the time of the Tokyo Olympics, suggesting it was perhaps a subconscious draw.
Bostic said that since the gym reopened in 2021 closing due to the coronavirus pandemic, general membership at Evo has seen steady growth. So has its youth competitive climbing team. Team Evo, which formed in 2015, is now a group of 20-30 kids aged 8-18 that meet three times a week to practice bouldering and lead climbing skills and prepare for competitions around New England.
Kids aren’t the only ones who get to compete. Every spring, Evo hosts a gym-wide sport climbing competition called the Struggle Bus for 100-120 adult climbers.
Although they are competitions, the point is to showcase excellent talent in an enjoyable way, while welcoming others into the climbing community.
“For the most part, climbers are just excited to be included, and they’re happy that we have representation in the Olympics,” Bostic said. “The only time I would say that’s not as true is some people have the opinion that it might have been a little nicer when it was less popular, and there were less people in our wild spaces or even in the gym. You come in on a busy night, it could be kind of hard to get on the wall.”
Even with the busier crowd and increased wait times, climbers agree that the increased attention is a general positive, especially as Evo and other rock climbing gyms and communities aim to increase accessibility and diversity in the sport. Olympic coverage is just another opportunity to expand to more possible climbers; a welcoming community is what keeps them coming back.
“Over the years, it’s become a little bit more accessible, and when I say ‘a little bit,’ I mean a little bit,” Bostic said. “But people understanding that it’s not just for affluent, adventurous people, that it can be for people in the city, or people who want an outlet who don’t necessarily jibe with team sports. We’ve seen a lot of growth there.
“We have a variety of different affiliated meetup groups that are there for underserved demographics, particularly in climbing or outdoor spaces. So we have to put a little bit more work in, but we find it to be really rewarding to help make climbing more accessible and more diverse.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-08 06:59:00
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