| 
 | 
 
2位参赛选手在此次比赛的感受。其中提到攀岩进入奥运会还有很长的路要走。 
我在想,攀岩进入奥运会对我有什么好处呢? 
更多的关注,更多的人加入,室内场馆更多,买器材更容易,价钱是涨还是降说不清... 
有什么坏处呢?暂时没想到。 
总得的来说,不太关心,也不太期待。呵呵~~ 
 
1.http://www.usaclimbing.org/resources/2006_usac_olympics_report.pdf 
 
2. 
 Mike Doyle gives us a quite sad story from how he and our sport 
took part in the Torino Olympics as a demonstration sport. Climbing 
is one of the fastest growing sport nowadays but if we want to be 
part of the Olympics we probably need to change our competition 
format as many other sports do. Here is some suggestions from 8a. 
 
As many of you know the international federation for competition 
climbing (UIAA-Climbing) was asked to hold some climbing 
demonstrations during the Olympics in Bardonecchia, site of the 
Olympic snowboarding events. The Mayor of Bardonecchia was able to 
secure housing for 10 climbers at a time so the UIAA invited 30 
climbers from around the world and cycled them through for the 16 days 
of Olympic competition. I was in the first group and here are my 
impressions of what went on and how climbing was received. 
 
The first group was definitely the most international with climbers 
from four different continents. There were two climbers from Asia (Lei 
Zhao - China, Lai Zhao Cheng - Hong Kong), two more from Australia 
(Christina Bedard, Alan Pryce), three from North America (Mike Doyle - 
Canada, Vadim Vinokur - USA, Emily Harrington - USA) and four from 
Europe( Jorg Verhoven - Netherlands, Magnus Midtboe - Norway, Angela 
Eiter - Austria, Killian Fischhuber - Austria). Fortunately everyone 
spoke english so we were all able to communicate. 
 
None of us really knew what to expect when we arrived in Italy; Would 
the Olympics be a party? Would lots of people watch the climbing? Were 
we competing against each other? How cold would it really be? And the 
most important question, would competition climbing benefit from this 
event? 
 
We all hoped that competition climbing would benefit and the 
individual climbers made different sacrifices to be there. Some 
changed road trip plans and paid their own way, some skipped school 
and some took time of work to travel to Italy for a week. 
Unfortunately I have to say that for the first group I'm not sure 
competition climbing did benefit. 
 
We were scheduled to climb twice a day with open climbing in the 
morning and then a demonstration in the evening. It turned out there 
was no difference as we would just end up climbing together and 
sessioning. While it was a great time meeting everyone and climbing 
around I'm sure it wasn't that exciting to watch. Imagine 10 people 
scrambling around on boulders on one side of a huge room. People would 
poke their heads in, stay for a bit and then leave. I'm guessing not 
more than 20 people watched us in the week we were there. I was hoping 
for more of a demonstration of climbing, maybe a mock competition or 
at least something more exciting to watch. 
 
As I said I was in the first group and I had hoped that things would 
pick up after I left. Obviously the town and the athletes around were 
pre-occupied with the Olympics. Unfortunately according to Maja Vidmar 
things were pretty slow when she was there as well. She was in the 
last group. 
 
At least we had access to that amazing Itallian coffee and table tenis 
(which China dominated)! The hospitality that the city showed us was 
great and we were treated to the Male Snowboarding Halfpipe 
competition so that was pretty cool. Although 6 hours of seeing guys 
doing roughly the same thing was a bit much for all of us. 
 
Nobody in the UIAA has any illusions about climbing becoming an 
Olympic sport quickly. They understand that the sport still needs to 
grow at the grassroots level in many countries. I would say that is 
the biggest thing I took away from this event. The desire to help 
bring competition climbing mainstream in Canada first. Now if only I 
could quit my job... 
 
For a slightly different perspective check out Debbie Glowach's report 
here: http://www.usaclimbing.org/resources/2006_usac_olympics_report.pdf 
 
Mike Doyle |   
 
 
 
 |