Welcome to the new look Behind the Wall newsletter, a weekly newsletter published every Wednesday, where I take a deeper look into the world of competition climbing.
The new format will contain
- An essay taking a deeper look at an aspect of competition climbing,
- A news recap from the past week,
- My 5 favourite pieces of content from the last week,
- Where to buy tickets to watch international competition climbing
- Which competitions are coming up in the next week or two.
If you have any feedback on the new format, please let me know at behindthewall@inside-climbing.com. I look forward to hearing from you!
Team Selection Process
The selection process for athletes in 2025 is even more important after the IFSC changed the quota system. Previously, athletes in the top 10 of the World Cup season got a bye to the next season and did not count towards a country quota.
In 2025, this will not be the case.
The highest number of athletes a country can send to an event is 6 athletes made up of 2 + 4 optional quota places for having 4 athletes in the top 40 in 2024. The only way to send more athletes to an event is to host a World Cup, where the host country gets an additional 4 quota spots per gender.
I looked at the countries whose selection processes are easily accessible: the USA, the UK, Australia, France and Japan.
Depending on their performance, they group athletes into 3 groups:
- Podium Pathway: These athletes are usually pre-selected prior to their national selection events based on their performance in the 2024 season using the Continuously Updated World Ranking (CUWR). They represent the country’s best chance to win medals at Continental Championships, World Cups, World Championships and the Olympics.
- Progress Pathway: The progress pathway is for athletes who regularly make semi-finals or the irregular final. They need support to progress to becoming regular finalists and potentially reach the podium.
- Development Pathway: These athletes include high-performance youth athletes and those athletes who have been successful nationally but have yet to perform at a high level at the World Cup level.
Let’s look at how each country selects athletes for these different groups.
Note that the quota places do not strictly limit the number of places. Because of this, the countries also use selection events to prioritise athletes for going to competitions.
France
The detailed description of the process for the French team started my interest in how athletes are selected.
Sam Avezou is the only athlete for both Boulder and Lead on the Podium Pathway after his medal wins at the European Championship, World Cups and the Olympic Qualification Series. Oriane Bertone, Naïle Meignan and Mejdi Schalck are all selected for the Boulder Podium pathway.
The next set of athletes are pre-selected based on a podium or 3 top 8 results in an international competition (a World Cup, OQS or Olympics). This includes Paul Jenft, Manu Cornu, Zélia Avezou, Agathe Calliet for Boulder and Lead. For Lead, Mejdi Schalck, Max Bertone (as an elite youth athlete) and Oriane Bertone are pre-selected. The French Speed Olympians Capucine Viglione and Manon Lebon have both been selected as part of this group.
In France, more athletes are pre-selected for the development pathway who have performed well in 2024, including some high-performance youth athletes called the “young elite”, including Thomas Lemagner and Kito Martini. Athletes need to be regular World Cup semi-finalists or World Cup finalists or reach the podium at the 2024 Youth World Championship or a podium in the Senior European Cup in 2024.
Which events they attend will depend on their performance at the France 2025 selection events, either the National Championship in February or a selection event at Karma in March. The team is then augmented with athletes who perform well at the National Team selection events.
United Kingdom
In the UK, athletes are pre-selected based on their performance in 2024 and those named as recipients of UK Sport funding.
The podium pathway (or programme) athletes are named Podium Programme athletes by UK Sport and receive funding from UK Sport.
Athletes pre-selected for the senior development pathway are those who qualified for the 2024 Olympics, won a medal at the European Championship or finished in the top 20 of the CUWR in Boulder or Lead.
This means that Erin McNeice, Molly Thompson-Smith, Toby Roberts, Hamish McArthur, Max Milne and Dayan Akhtar have been pre-selected for the team.
The rest of the places are selected from the British Bouldering and Lead Championships. These selection events will be held on the 25–26th of January for Boulder and the 7–8th of February for Lead.
The total number of athletes is the number of quota places plus 4 and 2 reserves. This is 7 women and 10 men for Boulder and 8 women and 7 men for Lead.
USA
The USA doesn’t have a specific podium pathway. Instead, athletes are pre-selected based on 2024 performance. The USA 2024 Olympians Brooke Raboutou, Natalia Grossman, Colin Duffy and Jesse Grupper are all pre-selected. Also, Annie Sanders, who finished 5th in the CUWR in both Boulder & Lead disciplines, is pre-selected for 2025.
The USA uses a slightly different system to select their athletes. It utilises two events and gives bonus points to strong performance in 2024.
The USA hosts two different events to decide the National Team Ranking of athletes from which non-preselected athletes are chosen: the National Championship and National Team Trials. Athletes who performed well on the 2024 World Cup circuit get bonus points depending on their rank in the CUWR top 40 from the previous year. Adam Shahar finished 19th in the CUWR in 2024, so he got 194 bonus points.
The 2024 National Championship, which took place last year, is used to rank athletes. The Team Trails event will be held at Mesa Rim in Austin, Texas, on March 12 – 16th.
The top 2 in each Discipline's National Team ranking are selected after any pre-selected athletes in the ranking. Others in the top 5 are also selected to complete the team, which consists of 5 athletes per discipline. The USA National Development Team is made up of the top 10 in the national team ranking who are not on the national team.
For the two World Cups hosted in the USA, of which there are two next year, this extends to the top 16 in the ranking as host nations get an extra 4 quota spots per gender at each competition. Youth athletes are selected for the Youth National team separately.
Australia
For Australia, the podium pathway is to identify and support athletes with either strong international results or the potential to perform
and deliver top-8 results at a World Championships or Olympic Games in the next 4-years. The 2025 podium pathway athletes are both 2024 Olympians Oceana Mackenzie and Campbell Harrison.
The progress pathway for athletes in Australia is to support athletes with the potential to make consistent top-8 results at a World Championships or Olympic Games in 4 to 8 years. This rewards athletes who have reached a World Cup semi-final, a final result at a European Cup event or a semi-final at a Youth World Championship.
The athletes selected for 2025 are Maya Stasiuk for Boulder and Lead. For Boulder, they are also Dylan Parks and Maxim Pare. Dylan Soin and Emily Scott were selected as the lead.
The development pathway is for athletes who have the next highest rank at National competitions after athletes in a higher pathway or who are selected by the selection panel at their discretion. The 2025 athletes include Malo Gilly-Eydoux and Summer Fraser for Boulder, Joshua Damasco and Roxy Perry for Lead.
Japan
The athletes in Japan who form the podium pathway in Japan are the 2024 Olympians (for one discipline) and those in the top 10 in the Continuous Updated World Ranking as of January 1 2025. These include in Lead
- Ai Mori
- Mei Kotake
- Shion Omata
- Zento Murashita
- Sorato Anraku
- Satone Yoshida
- Taisei Homma
- Shuta Tanaka
and in Boulder
- Mao Nakamura
- Anon Matsufuji
- Miho Nonaka
- Sorato Anraku
- Meichi Narasaki
- Sohta Amagasa
- Tomoa Narasaki
The remaining athletes are selected using the Japan Cup series in February and early March. The top 8 in Boulder and Lead from the associated Japan Cup (excluding pre-selected athletes) will be selected.
If an athlete is not pre-selected, these events can become very stressful, as Tomoa Narasaki found out in 2022. In the 2022 Japan Lead Cup, Narasaki made a clipping error low down and did not reach the final. This error meant he was not selected for the Japanese Lead team for the rest of the year. Later in the year, he would win the Asian Continental Championship in Lead to secure a place.
The selection of Japanese athletes changes halfway through the year, rewarding those who podium in the first half of the year with a higher priority in the second half given to those who podium or reach the top 6 in the first half of the season.
In Speed, the top 3 from the Speed Japan Cup or those who meet the selection standard of 5.39 seconds for men and 7.99 seconds for women will be selected. Athletes are prioritised based on their best personal records. This is prioritising changes throughout the season based on athletes' fast runs in the last 30 days.
I hope you found this useful in understanding how athletes are selected for World Cups.
How does your country select athletes? I would love to hear!
News
Over the Christmas period, there were a couple of retirements from competition climbing.
Matic Kotar retired from competing. Although he never reached a semi-final (his highest place was 23rd in Innsbruck in 2021)
Ella Adamovska, who won gold in Briançon in 2021, wrote a heartfelt goodbye after struggling with the pressures of competing.
Janja Garnbret’s coach, Roman Krajnik, revealed in a Slovenia interview that Janja will only compete in the Innsbruck, Koper and Seoul World Championship next year as she takes some time to rest and climb on rocks.
The bouldering system is rumoured to undergo major changes in 2025. For example, the final will now feature 8 athletes, following the Olympic format. The system will also change to a points system, with just tops worth 25 points, zones worth 10 points, and -0.1 points per attempt.
Benjamin Hartmann posted on Instagram about the impact of the quota changes on the Japanese team. The team has six athletes in the top 10 for Lead and four in the top 10 for Boulder.
In previous years, these athletes would get a bye and not contribute to the Japanese quota. In 2025, they will.
IFSC minimum age changes will be put into effect in 2025. Athletes now need to be 16 and turn 17 in their first year of competing on the Open circuit by December 31st 2025 to compete. This aligns with other Olympic sports like athletics. As a result, the 2025 Youth World Championships will only include U17 (15-16-year-olds) and U19 (17-18-year-olds) age categories. Because of this, 14 and 19-year-olds who would have been eligible in previous years will not be in 2025.
Tijl Smitz, head of IFSC Europe, announced his candidacy for the IFSC presidential election on April 12th.
Dockmasters announced the routesetters, and some of the athletes registered for the event, including Olympians Jessica Pilz and Hannes Van Duysen and previous winner Staša Gejo.
Media Recommendations
Each week, I recommend 5 of my favourite pieces of indoor and competition climbing media from the past week or so.
First is a video from Hannah Morris which showcases two Paraclimbing athletes, Amruta Wyssmann (Switzerland) and Lucia Capovilla (Italy) who were born without a left forearm. Hannah explores how they got in to competing in Paraclimbing, their relationship with the sport what they think of the inclusion of Paraclimbing in the Paralympics in LA2028, and how they balancing competing on the World stage and working a normal job.
Campbell Harrison joins Kyra Condie again to talk about Wicked, the impact of social media on their careers and mental health, what it is like being on a board or committee representing athletes, and how climbing stars may be outgrowing the scope of the climbing industry in the future.
Jonathan Sin joins the B-pump Ogikubo setting team and World Cup winner Yoshiyuki Ogata to see how the infamously hard 'black tape' climbs in the gym are set.
"If he [Yoshiyuki Ogata] does a move, it is too easy" – Katsu Miyazawa , owner and routesetter at B-Pump Ogikubo
Jinni talks with British Physiotherapist Andy McVittie who specialises in treating climbers. They start with how he became a physiotherapist before moving on to whether there are competition move that he thinks are too dangerous, reflecting on some of the climbs from the 2024 Salt Lake City World Cup. They also talk about the kit World Cup climbers uses from KT tape, metal stickers to ice packs. They also talk about how injuries show up differently between men and women, and discuss the the relationship between period cycles and injury.
We finish with a classic board climbing video, featuring Olympians Nathaniel Coleman and Colin Duffy trying two really hard 8Bs at 55º on the Tension TB2 board.
International 2025 Competition Tickets
- 25-26th January: Dockmasters 2025. Tickets are on sale, though many have sold out.
- 15-16th March: Studio Block Masters 2025. Registration opens on 1st February.
- 22 –23rd March: CWIF 2025. Registration starts on 1st February, spectator tickets go on sale on March 3rd at 12pm.
- 23 – 29th June: Innsbruck 2025 World Cup. Tickets go on sale early spring.
- 7 – 8th June: Prague World Cup. Tickets are on sale
Competitions to Watch
Nothing this week, but the British Bouldering Championship and Dockmasters will be next weekend, 25&26th January. Both have been live-streamed in the past, so hopefully they will be the first competition of the year we can watch.
