Tim Hatch: Climbers’ dedication deserves Olympic recognition

Sports climbing is closing in on a ticket to Tokyo 2020. Tim Hatch, jury president of the International Federation of Sports Climbing, said the hard work of the top climbers deserves more acknowledgement.

The popular sport, with more than 35 million climbers worldwide, was proposed as one of five exhibition sports (together with skateboarding, baseball-softball, surfing and karate) to be included in Tokyo 2020 in September last year.

It was initially not clear how many of the sports would be chosen, but as of Wednesday last week in a self-proclaimed move named “the most comprehensive evolution of the Olympic programme in modern history”, IOC decided to approve all five. 

Hatch said: “I know just how hard the international athletes, the guys and girls competing on the world cups, how they train and how much effort they put into it.

“For me their level of dedication needs some kind of recognition and the Olympics provides a stage for that.”

Climbing is one of the fastest growing sports both in the UK and worldwide, but it has not featured in the Olympics since 1932, where rope climbing was part of the gymnastics event. Sports climbing has never been part of the world's most prestigious sporting competition.  

The final decision will be made at an IOC meeting in August before the Rio opening ceremony, but this does now seem like more or less of a formality with an official signing likely to take place.

Big Japanese medal chances
Hatch says he thinks the combination of the sports appeal to young people and the Japanese medal chances have been two very important factors.

“This is a host nation selection rather than an IOC selection and the Japanese are both hugely enthusiastic about sports climbing, and bouldering particularly.

“But not only that, they have incredible strength and depth. You go to the World Cup and there will be news of Japanese climbers you have never seen before, and they will be making semi-finals, and that is incredibly hard to do.

“So they have massive strength and depth, they have really good medal opportunities, and I think that makes it very attractive to the Tokyo committee.

“It (demographic) is also a big factor in why climbing is of interest to the Olympic community. Whether we in the end get in or not is subject to a whole range of factors. I like to think that the demographic of our sport has helped us.”

He also points out that the increasing popularity in general has caught the eye of the IOC. But why has it become so popular?

“It’s a very easy sport to do when you are young and it is quite attractive to young people and I feel thats a large part of why it is becoming more popular.

“And you get into a circle. Certainly in London we are seeing a lot of gyms open more people come and that means more people open gyms more people get the opportunity to climb, its a snowball effect”, Hatch said.

Very different to other sports
UK climber Nathan Phillips is one of the promising athletes that has a chance of becoming an Olympian in 2020. He thinks the variation is why people flock to climbing gym’s all over the world.

“It is really different to most other sports. In most sports, you do the same every time you go. Climbing is different every single time you do it.

“It is always different walls, different poles, different shapes and different movements and I think that is one of the main reasons why it is so exciting to watch and compete as well.

“If it got into the Olympics, it would also bring a lot of funding to the sport. Other sports have lots and lots of funding, climbing is still relatively low funded at the moment and it will definitely bring in the big sponsors from bigger companies as well.”

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