This is Roundtable. Sport climbing is a recent addition to the Olympic arena, while we are all likely to have seen it on TV, relatively few of us have personally got our hands and our feet on the boats.
But that's about to change, as more and more people get inspirations from competitions featured at the Olympic Games and other international events.
Hello, I'm Blaming, and this is Roundtable.
Today with Yushan and Joshua Cardoero, we're explaining what to expect at sport climbing competitions and opportunities and challenges for rock climbing businesses.
Get ready for Paris this summer, where tradition meets the cutting edge.
This year we're thrilled to introduce a fascinating series of sports that will redefine the excitement of competition.
We will witness exhilarating heights of sport climbing, gravity-defined tricks of skateboarding and epic waves of kayak cross.
Join us as we celebrate the spirit of competition and see history in the making.
Experience the thrills of new sports in Paris.
Let's you miss a moment of it.
Yushan always gets to me with his pumped up spirit in that promo.
I think everybody else that are looking forward to the Paris Olympics, I think we are all excited to see the events pan out in front of us.
As I see sport climbing is one of the new additions to the Olympic Games and being included at the Tokyo 2020, so I figure not all of us are familiar with the sport.
We begin our discussion with a little bit of background info before we delve into more end-of-discution.
Sure. To be honest, I was very surprised to find out that sport climbing is now officially one Olympic competitions now because one might believe that it is like a niche sport, but obviously it's on a world stage in a much bigger way than it ever has been.
So according to Olympics.com, sport climbing is a modern sport that has become immensely popular over the past 20 years.
It is a young mixed-gender sport with 39% of the climbers under 18 years old.
That's like a very young sport the way that I see it.
And this sport is practiced both outdoors and in a more urban format indoors.
And then there are over 25 million climbers in 150 countries all over the world.
And just one figure to be mentioned as a comparison that this is according to my research that 65 million people play either baseball or softball in over 140 countries.
This is according to World Baseball, softball, confederations, AKA WBSC.
You might think that baseball is like a sport with a big popularity of a very large scale, but just see that the figures are not really so much of a difference.
Just tells you how big of a market for sport climbing is out there, right?
What baseball and softball is one of the most popular sports in the world.
I mean, it's not matched to the most popular like soccer, which may have billions of fans worldwide, but it's still something that's celebrated and watched around the world by a lot of fans.
So just a little reference point for everybody to know how popular it is for sports climbing.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be included in the Olympic Games to begin with.
So a little X-ring for you.
And so how is sports climbing different from what we commonly see on TV?
Because I remember as a kid watching TV and see brave young people trying to challenge themselves, often at the risk of their own lives, by climbing a top, very adenters and very high mountains, and sport climbing, if it's being celebrated and loved by so many, shouldn't be as risky as it seems on TV, right?
That's right. And according to Britannica.com, this type of sport climbing is a type of climbing in which climbers ascend a route that is equipped with pre-placed permanent bolts, rather than placing temporary bolts as they climb up.
And that is like one big difference that a sports climbing shares with traditional climbing.
And also in the meantime, sport climbing is generally considered to be safer, faster to learn, and less expensive comparing with traditional rock climbing as well.
And speaking of rock climbing, I'm not sure if I'm being correct, but I heard that Josh, you have personal experience of climbing up mountains or doing rock climbing yourself, right?
Well, yeah, I mean, I think here is a talking point maybe, because actually I don't have a lot of experience in sport climbing and a lot of traditional forms of climbing.
I have, we use in English the word climb when we talk about ascending a mountain, even if it's more like a trek or something like that.
And I've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
Yeah, but there was minimal bouldering.
There was a little bit of it, but there was no need for any sort of climbing experience in terms of, you know, using your fingers and any of those kind of techniques and using your upper body strength.
It was more of just a fitness and a sort of mental endurance thing, I would say.
So it's really quite different.
And I think that there are many different forms of climbing.
So certainly when it comes to traditional climbing as well, which I think is sometimes abbreviated as proud climbing from what I've read, right?
This also is something that I'm not particularly experienced in, even though I have climbed Kilimanjaro.
All right. So besides the skills that are required, climbing the tallest mountains around the world, there is also the difference in the kind of gears that you might want to employ.
For sport climbing, we were talking about boats.
I imagine for professional rock climbing or fanatics of rock climbing, they will be placing their own boats as they move along the mountains.
Or maybe the surface or risky surface of a mountain, whereas for trekking or climbing up mountains, I think people might need more like shoes and and backpacks and that sort of thing.
So correct me if I'm wrong Josh.
Yeah, absolutely. You're right.
The equipment is very, very different.
Because again, if it's something like endurance over a long period of time, like the very brief climbing experience that I have, I must say I'm not professional, but any means.
But we basically just needed equipment that was going to be able to weather serious weather conditions for about a week, about seven days, right?
So you need big heavy, thick walking boots that you've worn into maybe over months beforehand so that you don't get blisters and thick coats in case it rains or there's snow, for example, when it comes to sport climbing, it's the complete opposite, right?
Sport climbing, I think it's a lot more watchable.
I think that's one of the reason it was included.
I wouldn't want to watch someone climb Kilimanjaro in real time.
Maybe the highlights though.
I stitching a tent and spending the night chatting with people, and not exactly the watchable kind of sport to be shared with the international audience.
But sport climbing can be very watchable.
So one of the items or one of the programs like speed climbing can finish within six, seven seconds, and the fastest can get it down in the male groups within six seconds.
So it's very fast, it's very watchable, and I think it's very fitting to be shared over the internet on platforms, such as TikTok, where you often see very short videos.
And also the kind of people who get involved in sport climbing are often very young.
Some of the most successful climbers from China, they actually were sweeping the games at the age of eight.
And so a lot of them professional climbers at international competitions are aged 12 or slightly above that.
So by 18 you will be some of the most mature or senior members of the athletes.
So that's one of the differences that we'll be looking at.
And you should have any other things that a regular audience should be watch out for so they know what's going on in terms of what they see on TV.
Like we mentioned speed.
What other competitions are there?
Oh yeah, actually this year it's for the first time in the Olympic history that speed or rather speed climbing is an event in its own right.
So this summer there are two competitions that will crown their own Olympic champion in sport climbing.
And the first one is a combination of bordering and lead event.
And the second one is a speed event on its own.
So to be honest, these are the three main, say, principles of sport climbing.
So the bordering, the lead climbing and speed climbing.
And these three principles they used to be seen or rather to be combined in one set of middle per gender back in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo that was held in 2021.
And that actually attracted a lot of criticism because you know professional climbers such as American rock climber Lynn Hill said that adding speed climbing was like asking a middle distance runner to compete in the sprint so that speed is kind of like a specialized principle or an event where the athletes they focus on climbing fast.
So the speed is the only purpose.
The ultimate goal. In the meantime, for the other two principles, there are other criteria that they need to attend.
So there are athletes that really specialize in speed alone.
So back in 2021, when all three principles were combined in one, it was rather unfair and challenging for some professional athletes to you know, just be in the studio and just raise and get challenged just like that.
So this year they've been making this adjustments to separate bordering and lead event with speed.
So we see speed is on its own this year.
So they do require athletes to possess different kinds of skills and physical abilities in order to excel and beat other top players.
In bordering athletes climb 4.5 meters high walls without ropes in a limited period of time and in the fewest attempts possible.
Whereas in the lead event, athletes climb as high as they can on a wall over 15 meters high in six minutes without having seen the route ahead of time.
The routes for this event are more and more complex and challenging during the event requiring all of the athletes physical and mental ability.
So one of the keywords that is often used in describing the competition is problems, problems that are presented by the formation of the boats that possess a challenge to whoever that is participating in the event.
The athletes will have to find their own unique path using their own skills and their physical strengths to find a way along the route and to score points so that they can beat other competitors.
So I imagine these are very very watchable moments that we can expect to see during our coverage on the Olympic Games.
Josh, this is relatively new and like you said earlier, you've only engaged in the trekking kind of mountain climbing.
I wonder whether sport climbing is anything as popular as a soccer in the UK.
I don't think that's possible but that help me evaluate the popularity of that event in the UK.
Yeah, sure, I can certainly give it a go.
You're quite right. Soccer is probably not going anywhere anytime soon in terms of being that the number one most popular sport in the United Kingdom.
There are other sports as well that are up there, although have less sort of mass public participation sports like boxing, very popular in the United Kingdom, combat sports are on the rise.
But climbing is on the rise for sure and it has long been very popular in the United Kingdom and most of the United Kingdom, including our national parks, have mountains that are quite comparable in the sense that they're not that tall.
So you can go up to the highest mountain in the UK.
It maybe I believe it takes maybe four hours to get to the top of the tallest mountain in the United Kingdom.
And there's many places that are very accessible for all levels and ages and even families, you know, in the Lake District can go up a mountain in a up and down a mountain in a few days.
So we've long had a relationship with climbing.
And actually when it comes to sport climbing, the number of climbing gyms in the UK has increased significantly over the past decade.
And I found a statistic here as of the end of last year, there were over 400 indoor climbing walls across the United Kingdom.
And also the British Mountaineering Council reported that there was a steady rise in the number of members reaching over 85,000 by the end of last year, which is quite a lot.
And also the demographic is showing that young people and families are participating in the UK, approximately 70% of UK climbing gym users are under 30 years old.
So it seems as though it's becoming very popular.
And I think that you made quite a great point actually about it being quite Instagrammable, quite tick tockable to some degree.
And also, you know, as an individualistic kind of sport, it's quite approachable.
You are sort of in competition with yourself right in many ways.
And I think that that is quite appealing to a lot of the younger generation of the UK and around the world.
Right. How is it accepted culturally?
Because let's say somebody invites you to rock climbing to a gym to engaging rock climbing or sport climbing.
What is your reaction to that?
I mean, I think it's bound to be different from somebody inviting you to the pub after work.
Yeah. I mean, it's happened to me many times in the UK.
I have a lot of friends that are inter-climbing.
I mean, it's even happened to me in Beijing.
And it's funny that I have been invited in more of a social way, then assuming that I have no experience.
And I think that, yeah, maybe being invited to the pub would be slightly different.
But there is something slightly more approachable about going to a climbing gym as opposed to maybe joining a football team or going to a boxing gym or joining a rugby team or something like this, which I think is a lot more intimidating, possibly because the sport is so developed and the level is very high in my own country, at least, for these sports.
And they're also quite competitive.
Climbing, you can make it as competitive as you want to as an individual, right, on an individual level.
So in that sense, it's quite accessible, I believe.
Sport climbing is also picking up in popularity in China, especially in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
The number of gyms providing that service has been increasing over the past few years, especially after it was included in the Olympics.
And you shan, what would be your reaction if somebody, let's say, a young lad invites you to do sport climbing somewhere, let's say, in West Beijing, I know, over a place that's called Mountain Quest.
That's quite close to us.
Okay, just to answer this based on the scenario, I'm given a young lad inviting me to go sport climbing.
Yeah, like a date or something.
Oh my gosh. My reaction will be...
No, but thank you. Yes, that will be like a nice invitation if that got interest me in the first place that I'm willing to just try out anything new with them.
But in the meantime, if, I mean, under any sorts of invitation on trying out new or niche sports, like sport climbing, I think it's a rather good experience in general, because like you mentioned, a lot of the gyms in the more developed cities in China like Beijing, Shanghai that focuses on providing such services to have you experience how it feels like for sport climbing is to have such an aim to just let a bigger public, general public here in China to know the sports, to get the experience and be interested and be willing to invest more time and money in whatever onto this sport, even try to bring their kids to practice with them.
There's a very interesting comment that I've been reading online saying that in the past, a lot of first-generation climbing or sport climbing enthusiasts.
Yeah, they will bring their kids, their children, to join the sports as well.
Oh poor kids. Seriously, but these kids, they have like a nickname of Panardai, which literally means the strict generation climbers exactly.
Like, would you bring your child to try out sport climbing in that case?
I'm yet to become the first generation climber.
Oh, you know what, you don't really need to become a first-generation climber in order to bring your kids into the sports.
Because like you said, ever since sport climbing was officially added to the Olympic programs that is around the year 2016, sport climbing has been growing in popularity in China as well.
According to a recent article by Shin Huan, news agency Hu Song, vice president of Beijing Mountain Nearing Association said, since sport climbing debuted in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, many media reported that the sport has been making its popularity in multiple, say, major cities in China like we discussed.
And many parents, now that we're coming to the key point, who don't climb themselves, start to let their kids or let their children learn the sport systematically, resulting in an explosive growth in the youth climber group.
Let's hear that. Youth climber group, are you interested?
Well, I could certainly see the point encouraging young kids to participate in that event.
I often go to shopping malls across Beijing and more often than not, I see the facilities build up most likely on weekends.
And there will be enthusiastic parents pushing and coaxing and cajoling their kids to really climb up a very steep wall that's set up in the middle of the lobby in the shopping mall.
And they often wear safeguards.
There's a rope and often their coaches watching over them.
So I think it's a very good opportunity to encourage kids to challenge themselves to overcome fears and that kind of thing.
But then again, I have dots about this kind of business because like any other business, for instance, like roller skating, I took my kit to roller skating once or twice.
And I learned that in fact, there are multiple channels in which a kit can engage in roller skating.
And that is there is the farm kind of roller skating experience and there is the professional kind of roller skating experience.
And it's really up to the parents to decide whether their kids are talented enough to pursue career or pursue a hobby in a more serious way as a professional or an amateur or whether parents just simply want their kids to enjoy the experience and have fun walking very quickly on these wheels, that kind of thing.
So I think it's the same thing for sport climbing in China as well.
On the one hand, you have consumer oriented outlisten businesses that make themselves known in shopping malls across big cities.
On the other hand, there are relatively more professional gyms where they organize events where they need to hire very professional route setters to change their path every now and then so that people don't get tired of what they get.
Oftentimes here in China, a lot of the sport climbing view is that they are members of many gyms so that they get a refreshing experience whenever they feel like climbing and so that they get more opportunities.
Josh, is this the same thing in the UK?
You mentioned at the very beginning that there are about 400 gyms featuring sport climbing services.
Is it the same thing that if you were a fan of sport climbing and you often go there, you often become members of multiple gyms so that you can get the experience.
What's the situation with new routes being set?
You mentioned at least in the Asian market, it's really challenging and oftentimes very costly for gym owners to hire professional internationally renowned route setters to help them set up the base whereas I want to what's the situation in the UK and internationally?
Yeah, well, when I say that there were 400, I think that that's referring to indoor climbing centers but there are actually a lot of climbing walls in the UK whereby you can sort of learn some skills.
I know that people even have them inside their homes.
I've seen them inside garages and stuff like this.
It really is that popular.
And another thing in the UK is actually quite hard to get accurate statistics on this because I know that the UK climate is quite temperate.
It doesn't shift to extremes like for example you might have in Beijing and also as I mentioned the mountains in the UK are quite, they're not that tall.
So it's pretty accessible and the country has numerous natural climbing areas that are placed called the grist stone edges of the peak district and there's also a massive area called Pembrokeshire that has all sorts of climbing experiences for all levels.
So really the UK is a whole massive climbing area and I know that in China and in other countries it can be quite different, right?
You have places like you know the Himalayas and you have the Alps as well where it's not really for the faint of heart.
Let's be honest you know you have to have some climbing experience if you're going to go out there and venture and conquer one of those peaks and if you're going to do something even more extreme like ice climbing or something like that which I know is quite popular in places like Canada that's a whole nother ballgame which really is less popular in the UK simply because we do not have that kind of natural ice climbing facility or mountain.
All right got it. So China did manage to train very competitive talent to participate in the Olympics.
At the Olympic qualification series find around this June China's Pan Yu Fei and Lord Lu will secured Olympic quotas in men's and women's border and lead respectively.
Then Li Drian, another Chinese athlete for the Speak Climbing event in Paris was once an Asian record creator.
She won a silver medal for China in the Hanjo Asian Games in 2023 so there you go there are a few historical moments that you might want to be looking up for come the next Olympic Games in Paris.
This is Roundtable. Coming up Newholing presents a special program China's Deepening Reform in the eyes of the youth.
