Tuesday 26 March saw round 1 of the BMC Paraclimbing Series 2013 hosted at the Castle Climbing Centre, London, round 2 was hosted at Newcastle Climbing Centre - see report and results for both.

Round 1 - Written by Graeme Hill, GB Para Climbing Team manager

Following the success of the GB Paraclimbing Team in 2012, the highlight of which was Fran Brown being crowned world champion at the IFSC World Championships in Paris, the BMC has continued to support the development of paraclimbing with a three-event series of competitions in 2013.

Although there wasn’t a huge increase in the number of competitors at the first event, compared to the 2012 series, we did see a big increase in talented climbers coming through. We also noticed a vast improvement in standards of climbers who have competed over the last three years demonstrating that training opportunities are improving. It was also great to see some of the categories attracting a greater number of people, in particular autism.

Competitors had to attempt three boulder problems and three routes. All the problems and routes were kept close together and walls were stripped for competition routes. As you can imagine, this greatly assists people with visual impairments, autism and learning disabilities.

The atmosphere at the event was brilliant, and much praise must go to the Castle Climbing Centre, Ian Dunn (route setter) and BMC support staff and volunteers for the fantastic work they put into the event. Everything was delivered to a very high standard, which is great to see in a relatively new disability sport. Improvements can be made; we do still have some work to do on categories. We had two people with arm impairments pitched against a competitor who had use of all limbs with limited movement, so we may have to look at creating a separate category for arm impairments.

World champ Fran Brown didn’t climb due to her recent injury but did attend to present prizes. She also tweeted: “good to see routes I assisted setting yesterday get crushed today.”

Round 2 - Written by Mark Goodings, Manager - Newcastle Climbing Centre

Everyone at NCC would like to thank all of the climbers and spectators who attended the BMC Paraclimbing Competition last week. There was a great atmosphere with all competitors pulling hard on some technical and challenging routes. Big shout to NCC regular Tom Perry who battled hard to come second in his category. Keep up the training Tom!

A full photo gallery from the event is available here.

BMC Paraclimbing Series 2013 final results

Entries are still open for the last round in the series and everyone is most welcome. You can either come along to watch, enjoy some competitive climbing, or if you want to take it further we are still talent identifying members for the GB Paraclimbing Team.

Round 3: Sunday 12 May - Manchester Climbing Centre

 

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