Page 38 - 2014 AMA Summer

HQ Sp Comd (South and Central) Climbing Competition
2014
Written by Dave Cross
This year’s battleground for the coveted
South and Central champion was
Reading Climbing Centre. The final
routes proving as challenging as ever. More about these later. First of course; the preliminary climbs.
45 Climbers set about the initial 5 qualifying climbs to give us the splits between categories. The routes were graded between 4-6b/c and climbed in an increasing difficulty order. The last of these was a delicate technical slab route that proved to have a very cheeky second and third move spitting most off. 2 competitors topped out these first climbs; well done to them.
The top 7 climbers went through to the elite final at about 7b/c the women and under 25s climbing the same route for their final at about 6b/c and the open men and vets climbing their final at graded around 6c/7a. All the finalists went into isolation in the bouldering area so they couldn’t see how well the other climbers did on their attempt.
Whilst the qualifiers were being climbed the bouldering was open and the points for these were crucial to the team scores. A total of 6 teams were entered this year with Pirbright entering two teams. The points for the team competition are the total of each of the three climbers in the team from the bouldering and the qualifying routes. The top two teams were very close but 42 Engineers beat a young SEAE team by only 53 points with Pirbright A team coming third.
The final route for the open men and vets had a hard crux low down on their route meaning everyone got the same height so they used the women’s route for their super final. A close battle saw Capt Topping from Arborfield come out as the male open champion with Sgt Havenhand second and Cpl Kierran Sumner third. WO2 Si Goyder was this year’s veteran winner ahead of Cpl Chinrey and Capt Brown.
36 ARMY MOUNTAINEER
In the Under 25s category Cfn Sanders from
SEAE beat Gnr Myers and Cfn Taylor and all of them showing great promise for the future of Army climbing. The ladies showed great form and the filed is getting bigger every year. This year the winner was Cpl Yasmin Geoghegan with an impressive climb beating LCpl Sarah Sumner and Capt Oliver who placed 2nd and third respectively.
The elite competition was fought out on a nice 7b/c route and with everyone looking on the pressure was mounting. Of course the guys didn’t disappoint and they all put on a great show. It was Capt Paddy Snow coming 2nd above Sgt Tom Moulder who took a respectable third place but Maj Tom Odling cruised his way to victory climbing the route in remarkable style to become this year’s Sp Comd (S&C) Champion.
As ever with these competitions it was good to see lots of climbers at their first ever competition and they all saw that it is a friendly competition and lots of fun too. If you haven’t ever been to a climbing competition then get yourself to the next one. The Tri service bouldering league runs over the winter finishing with the Army bouldering champs in February; these are a great place to start; keep a look out for the DIN.
Again DMM supplied us with some brilliant prizes so thanks to them and also to Tom and the team at Reading Climbing Centre for hosting us again this year. Lastly I’d like to thank everyone who helped out with judging and other tasks throughout the day and see you all at the next comp.