Climbing – along with the other five new Olympic Sports – will have to wait another year to find out how much funding could be available from UK Sport.

It’s been a historic year for climbing: on 4 August it was officially declared a new Olympic sport by the International Olympic Committee in Rio de Janeiro, and Sport Climbing has now been added to the roster for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Today, UK Sport announced that the exact levels of funding available for Olympic Sport Climbing will now be revealed in a year’s time. They explained that there is a downturn in lottery income, but the government have committed to underwrite any financial shortfall, and subsequently UK Sport will invest the same amount in Olympic sport as they did in the Rio Games.

UK Sport have confirmed that they deemed the GB Climbing Team’s medal target realistic which hopefully means an investment award in our sport will be forthcoming towards the end of 2017.

Shauna Coxsey – our reigning IFSC Boulder World Cup Champion – has already announced that she’s committed to training for the Olympics, and commented this morning on Sky News that she thinks “funding is crucial if we want to excel”.

She added: “If athletes and the BMC work well together, we’ll go to the Olympics, make a big difference to our sport within the UK, and reach more people within our sport; which can only be a good thing.”

It’s now important that our athletes don’t lose this coming vital year of the cycle. The BMC is committed to supporting the athletes and will work with UK Sport in the coming months to develop a strategy for the World Class Programme so our athletes can achieve their best results next year and continue to do so moving towards the Games.

Rob Adie, BMC competitions officer, said: “The BMC has assembled a very talented pool of young climbers supported by an incredible set of results from the 2016 competition season, which was submitted to UK Sport in October together with our medal targets for the 2020 games. UK Sport has just confirmed to us that they agree with the medal potential of our climbers and think that our medal target is realistic – it’s fantastic news to have UK Sport’s confidence in our team’s abilities.

“The qualification, format and rules will be clarified by the International Federation of Sports Climbing in March; we will then be in a much better position to ensure we get the adequate support in place for our athletes in this very important year of the Olympic cycle. We will be working with UK Sport in early 2017 to develop our strategy for our World Class Programme and get our athletes on the road to Tokyo!”

Ahead of Tokyo 2020, we can look forward to see a preview of climbing in the Olympics when watching the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games (YOG). Just this week, the IOC Executive Board added Sport Climbing to the roster alongside Karate and Dance Sport, in addition to the 28 sports currently on the programme for the third summer of YOG.

The BMC looks forward to working with UK Sport to nurture British climbing’s future talent, whilst keeping the focus on our core work of access, conservation and the outdoors. We will continue to promote the interests of walkers, climbers, and mountaineers, and ensure the countryside and crags are maintained and accessible to all.

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GB Climbing is supported by the BMC, Mountaineering Scotland and Secur-it. Many UK walls also support the GB Climbing team through free or subsidised entry.

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