going to get killed because someone doesn't want to lose face in this autocratic regime.
Hey, can you take that down? I'm like, why? And it's like, it looks like they're doing the
Hitler salute. Climbing has a poverty mentality. Everyone loves to tell you how bad they're doing.
I think Olympics is one of the worst things that's ever happened to the sport.
Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host,
Jinni, and I'm excited to introduce my guest for today, Eddie Fowke. Eddie is an ex-IFSC
photographer who worked with them from 2014 to 2020. In this episode, we'll get his thoughts on
the ethics and purpose of photojournalism, hear about the chaos behind the scenes traveling around
for World Cups, and discuss ideas on how to get athletes better paid. He's got a lot of crazy
stories from his time working the World Cups, and he's got a lot of strong opinions about the IFSC
and the Olympics. So, strap in for another long episode, and please make sure to thank him for
all his time recording this with me. Hope you enjoy this episode with Eddie.
We'll just start with a very simple question of how you're doing this morning.
I'm doing very well. It's what I would consider an ungodly hour being 9 a.m., but then I'm just
definitely not a morning person. Having worked climbing events for so long, I'm used to shooting
into the evening and editing even later into the evening and getting up under duress when I have to.
Even now, years after that, I do prefer a more relaxed start to the day and then a more solid
finish to the day. I'm not one of these people that wakes up to watch the sun come over the
mountain sort of thing. I'm quite happy that it's going to do its stuff without me, and I'd rather
stay snuggled in bed, especially when it's cold. Yeah, that makes sense. I met a bunch of photographers
in China and Salt Lake, and they were always scrambling right after the comp to get photos
out as soon as possible. I think that was a similar experience for you. Yeah, I mean,
that's the thing that people forget is that we take so many photos during an event, and then
there's obviously going to be a lag while we're waiting for the photos to go onto our editing
systems, and then we have to do a selection, and then we have to get the photos just polished.
You know, normally we don't do much editing, or I don't, but just lightly polished, and then get
them out to respective sponsors. If you've got a final that finishes at 10, you might finish all
your editing of your fast edits for your clients by two or three. Oh, wow. Yeah. Normally, I'd do
some at the venue and get them out by like 10, 30, 11, like just the absolute podium photos,
one of each winner, and then go back to hotel or Airbnb wherever I'm staying,
and punch a few others out. If it's the last day and there's an after party, normally I'll try and
speed my process, so I could also go to the after party for a while and just unwind, but then after
the after party, I'd still go back and do some editing. So yeah, normally photographers are a
rough looking bunch the morning after a World Cup. Yeah, it seems like a stressful job. It's like
really kind of a race to just get those out as soon as possible. Well, we're kind of like the
polar opposite. We're the flip side of the route setters. The route setters have all the stress
before the event. We have all this stress after, and people think, oh, it's as easy as just holding
up a camera and click, click, click. And of course, it's not. Every photographer has their own style.
They have their own things they're trying to capture. They have their own internal vision
of how everything should look. And so you're working to achieve your goals to make sure you
have photos of all the people you require for clients. And then you sort of rush into that
after the round. And I've spoken before with podcasts and said, I'm normally there an hour
before a round because I want to look at the routes. I'm probably the least capable climber
that can read the hardest boulder problems because there's no way I can climb a World Cup boulder
at this stage in my life. But I'd say seven to eight times out of 10, I can read the sequence
because that's part of the job for knowing for positioning, for which way the climbers will be
facing, for where they'll be jumping, how they'll be swinging and everything. Because you don't want
to sort of stuff the first climber, especially in the final. You don't want the climber to start
and you go, oh, I've just got their back. You want to be in the right position. So normally you go in
before, catch a route setter if you can, but they're not always around at that time.
And try and work out. It's a bit easier now, of course, when I started, I mean, qualifiers,
there's a lot of people on the wall, semis, there's a lot of people on the wall. But when I started,
you used to have male and woman finals at the same time. And if you had one facing one way and one
facing the other, it was always a nightmare because you kind of had to accept that you're
going to sacrifice good photos of one to get good photos of the other and hope that you're going to
get something usable from the one that wasn't as good, but you never knew. And so it was,
it's a lot easier now with one climber on the mat. So it just, it changes the dynamic a bit.
But also there's the thing of you want the good angle, but one thing, so you were just at Salt
Lake and you were in China and you were just seeing quite often, you get a clump of photographers.
Yeah. And my goal was normally to be outside the clump because I wanted a point of difference.
Right, exactly.
Because if you have some of the big world cups, you'd have 25, 30 photographers, especially Munich
back in the day, it used to be huge. And that all be in one place and you're like, okay, I know
that's a good place, but what can I do which conveys the event, conveys the athlete, but in
a different place. So you shuffle around and I don't know how long you've been following the
sport, but of course there was a long time when I was the IFSC photographer and I had access to the
mats that I'll be on the mats, I'll be in shooting quite hard angles because we were shooting
quite hard angles because when you're on the mats, normally you can get close to the wall and
shoot across the wall so that you get the climbers more into space rather than shooting in on the
wall where they can be quite flat against the backdrop. It takes out sort of the three
dimensionality of it a bit.
Yeah, I mean, this is actually the first interview I've done since I went to any world
cups in person. So now I have a little bit of a different perspective, which is interesting.
I don't think I saw that many photographers at these events. I mean, a lot of videographers as
well, but less than 10 for sure.
Okay, that's interesting because back in the day, they were very limited on videographers
because they had very strict media policies on anyone except the official video crew filming.
So back in the day, it used to primarily be photographers, but of course, media was different
than now so much as reels and this, that and the other. Back then, a lot more of it was literally
just the stills. And of course, the stills are what's saleable for advertising or magazines or
things like that. And yeah, I think certain events, like I know, for instance, back in the day,
USA climbing used to limit the number of photographers that were there. Like shooting
USA Nationals used to be one of trickier events to get accreditation for, even though I was
well-known in the scene, purely because they didn't want anyone else effectively,
commercially selling the photos. They just wanted to promote their own photographers, which,
although I respect, it means that you only get one person's artistic vision of how the
boulders should look or a couple, depending on how many photographers they have. And of course,
China generally has less photographers in general. If you were to go to a World Cup in Japan,
there's a sea of photographers and a lot of World Cups in Europe, there's a really strong core of
photographers that are at just about every World Cup. So you have, you know, Bjorn and Sitsi and
people like that who are always there and always around. And then, you know, Marco Kost and
people like that, as well as the news outlets, the Getty photographers, the people like that.
And so, you know, some of the old photos, especially of Munich, and I remember of the
early days of Munich, there being, you know, in the early days of Munich, it was Marco,
Marco Kost. And then it was sort of like Marco and myself. And then by like 2017, 18, there was
50. It got to the stage where, you know, you used to say, oh, if you can't get a ticket to go to a
World Cup, just apply for the media. Now, thankfully, they've cracked down on that. But it was
almost obscene at one stage, like there was, you know, athletes, friends, just, and stuff who
couldn't get tickets just applying. And you'd see them go, what are you doing here? Oh, media. And
you're like, really? And have you ever held a camera? And they're like, no, okay. And you'd see
people with like iPhones in the press pit. And you're like, what?
Interesting. I mean, I guess that's kind of me because I'm not a photographer.
So I kind of just stand there. Still trying to figure out what to do when I go. But
it's tricky being a journalist. Like, you know, I'm very good friends with Natalie Berry from UK
climbing. And she has the similar experience that when she's there, she almost feels superfluous.
But she has to be there to, to take it all in. So she can write a firsthand account of the
sensation, the feeling, the vibe of being there. Yeah, maybe I should talk to her about that.
Yeah, should be a very good and you know, she's an incredibly accomplished journalist and
has definitely, definitely forged a place for herself in the industry. And she's also
one of a few that came from the competitive background. She was a World Cup lead climber
herself back in the day and came up through juniors with Shona and people like that. And so,
you know, but I did a lot of work with her pre last Olympics, just about athlete profiles and
the sad and the other. Because, as everyone knew back in the day, I was very close with most of
the athletes and therefore, when you're profiling an athlete, I can give quite salient points about
them. And that's the thing that when you're a photographer, you're not going to be able to
do that. When you're a photographer, there's sort of two schools of thought and sport photography,
individual sport photography, let's say here, not team sport photography. Although it does apply to
an extent to team sport photography. But the school of thought is that you are not seen,
not heard, you are effectively part of the furniture. Or the other school of thought is that
you are friends with the people and therefore they are comfortable with you in this space.
And so I always subscribe to the second school because I think it's important that
you're never a distraction. You're always just consistent, but that they're comfortable with you.
You'll never, oh wait, there's someone in my space. You're always the comfortable, friendly,
sort of the same as any other official. If they see a TD or a judge, generally speaking,
they know who they are and they're like, oh, it's just Stanley or
Hannes or someone like that. And I just, you know, and because we're, I wouldn't say smaller sport,
but we're quite a tight knit sport, that was a good way to, a good way to exercise that.
A good way to, good way to exist.
Yeah, that makes sense. And going a little bit into your own background, you mentioned that Natalie
was like one of the people who used to be in the comp scene personally as well, doing actual
competing. I think you were also doing some like climbing competitions prior to photography, right?
Yeah, absolutely. So the only difference was I was a generation or a couple of generations before,
and I was nowhere near as good. So
Well, you did say that you like qualified for some World Cups, right?
Exactly. So I was a good domestic level competitor and back in New Zealand, they used to have a
pretty stringent rule that you had to be top three ranked in the country to represent at World Cups.
And so from sort of 99 till 2003, I was in position to go to the World Cups. But
99, I didn't have enough money, 2000, I didn't, wasn't happy with my climbing, I felt like I needed
more progression. 2001, I thought, okay, I'm on the cusp, I'm going to go to some World Cups next year.
2002, I blew my knee up.
And how did that happen? Was it through climbing?
Stupid drop knee. So just looking at too many photos of Francois Le Grand and
doing the big French drop knees that were all the rage back then. And I was training on a bouldering
wall and twisted right into a move and had just all the weight driving down from my left knee and
it just went, it was like everyone in the gym where I was heard it sounded like a gun going off and it
was just my arm, posterior cruciate ligament exploded. And I sort of struggled on through 2003,
but knew that I wasn't what I had been, I couldn't do a bunch of movements because of my knee.
And at that stage, the surgeon said, only operate if it becomes unstable.
So I didn't get it operated on because posterior cruciate ligament's a bit of a different injury
to anterior cruciate ligament, of course. Anterior, you pretty much, you have to have the op, but
posterior, they like not to operate if they can. And then, yeah, 2004, I dropped out of the sport
because I couldn't climb as well as I used to. So I was pretty demoralized. So I actually moved to
Australia for climbing beginning of 2004 and the first six months kind of went okay.
But I was already on the decline and then I just hung my shoes up.
And then I just hung my shoes up for about five years, got very heavily into photography in that
time. Because amazing thing about being a climber is when you stop climbing, you get disposable income.
I guess that's true. Because when you're a climber, you put all your money into the climbing.
And so I got into photography, started doing a lot of motorsport photography.
I wouldn't say traveled all over the world, but traveled up into Southeast Asia, went to the
Singapore Grand Prix a couple of times, went to the Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang a couple of times.
Loved doing that. But it was just a hobby at that stage of life. I had a corporate job. I was
wearing a suit. I was another bland middle management person and another huge Fortune 500
company just pretending that I was important and effectively doing nothing. When you look back at
it, you're like, wow, there's not much to it. But then 2009, I still followed climbing, which was
hard to do back in the day because there's very little content around, especially competitions.
It was, you know, and I've always been an avid fan of competitions. But there was very little
content around competitions in the general media, in the English speaking media, at least.
Well, you kind of have to create it then.
Well, that's almost what happened. And I started climbing again in 2009 because one day I looked
in the mirror and just went, I don't want to be this person. I'm going to be middle aged and fat.
It has been so I sort of sucked it up and went, I'll never climb
as hard again, but I'll still get pleasure. And sort of became part of a Sydney scene in Australia,
bouldering outside there a lot. And everyone's like, oh, you had a knee injury. Why did you boulder?
Roots isn't roots, he's on the knee. The answer is if you're 70 feet up a root and you get to a
move you can't do, there's a whole lot of kerfuffle stripping the root back down. If you're on a boulder
problem, you get to a move and you can't do, you just jump off and go to the next boulder problem.
But yeah, so I sort of got back into the scene there, started taking photos, was lucky enough
to take a lot of photos with Naleh Hukajjaval and Dave Graham, Ian Dorey, Paul Robinson, Daniel Woods,
people like that, Carla Traversi, because they were all going to the Grampians a lot at that
age. And people were going, oh, you should sell your photos. And I'm like, there's no money in
climbing photography. Why would I do that? But then Roc and I bought a bunch of my photos. So
apparently there was some money. And then 2013, my friend James Casse said, I'm doing four World
Cups in Europe at the start of the season. Did I want to join? And I've never been to Europe at
that stage. So I said, yeah, you know what, I do want to join. And I took two months off work, and
flew across to Europe on a wing and a prayer. Basically, one of the Australian magazines,
very good Australian magazine called Vertical Life, got me to go as their photographer so that I
could take photos of them of James. And so I got media accreditations. And I turned up and there's
virtually no media anyway. I was like, oh wow, this is, you know, back then, Heiko Wilhelm,
back then, Heiko Wilhelm was the official, official IFSC photographer, even though he was
the Austrian coach, because there was just no real other photographer going to the events.
Which was great if you're Austrian and not great if you're from,
let's not even say, another top rate country, because he always made a lot of effort to get
a lot of good photos. But if you were further down the start list, chances are he was back
with his own athletes by then. And yeah, so that was a sort of baptism by fire. And I got there and
I just loved it. And if I look back, you know, the first World Cup I ever went to was, you know,
in France, which is down sort of in the south. And it was a Boulder World Cup. And I hadn't met any
of these famous climbers. And James already knew a lot of them, because he'd been overseas before.
And so I'm in a French shop buying a SIM card, so that I could have data. And Alex Puccio walks in
goes, Oh, are you Eddie? And I'm like, yeah, like just going on my goodness, it's Alex Puccio.
And she's like, Oh, just having lunch with James and I didn't want to eat all my pizza. So here's
half my pizza. And I'm just like, okay, I've never even met this famous climber who I'm a huge fanboy
of. And she's giving me half a pizza. And then pretty quickly got to meet a lot of the climbers.
It was culture shock, because they look so much bigger on screen. Oh, yeah, I totally relate to
that. When you first meet World Cup climbers, you're like, Oh, my goodness, this is like
a climbing competition for little people. This is a different division. And you know, growing up in
New Zealand, which is not a climbing hotspot very much on the side of the world, the number one
excuse when people can't do stuff is I'm not tall enough. And suddenly you're there and everyone's
like mini me's, you know, I could stand in a crowd at a climbing World Cup and always have an
uninterrupted view because at just over six foot tall, there was only I think Jan Hoyer and
Jorg Verhoeven were taller than me, everyone else was quite often considerably shorter.
And they also look a little bit scrawnier than I was expecting to like I thought they would have
huge like bulging muscles. But no, no, there's some that do like, you know, people like Chloe,
or things like that yarn back in the day. But they are very lean, very, very lean.
And that was interesting, because yeah, first World Cup, and I was like, where do we stand?
They're like, stand where you want. And I'm like, what? And so back then, it was four free standing
boulders that they climbed. And there was a curtain at the back of each boulder. And you
could actually stand in the athlete staging area and shoot out the curtain on the angle.
And I remember standing there shooting woman's qualification. And when you've not been to the
World Cup, you can be a fan of a lot of these people, but you've never met them, of course.
And I'm standing there taking photos, and I step back in and you're the worms getting ready like
right next to me. And I'm just like, you know, am I in a space? I don't want to say anything,
but this is where the photographers are supposed to stand. And so it was,
and so it was, it was kind of crazy. And it was a very small, tight knit climbing family back then.
And yeah, so I did four World Cups and it was Mio Kitzbuehl, Innsbruck,
and I can't even remember what the other one was. But that was the first year. And at the,
sort of halfway through then I went climbing needs or competition climbing needs something,
because these people, as I got to know them, they had fascinating stories.
You know, you had Mina Markovic doing psychology at university and being an incredibly considered
and well thought through person. You had Yulia Worm was just starting mid school at that stage
to be a doctor. And you had, then the sort of died in the wool comp climbers like Yenna Kruder,
who were like, I'm not studying anything. I just want to be really good at comps. And they all had
very different and unique personalities. So I was like, something needs to happen here. So I just
sort of went, well, I'll do a magazine. And I started my own magazine, The Circuit, and
people bought it. And then the next year I went back and my plan was to take a six month career
break, which was something we had the option of free work. They just seconded someone into your
position and you stepped out. So I bought all my FAs, got everything ready. And two weeks before
it was time to go, work turned around and made a whole lot of people, sadly not myself redundant.
And then said, Oh, you can't go because we've just made the other people in your department
redundant. And it's not going to happen. I said, well, actually it is. I've already got the FAs.
So I quit my job and just went. And at that stage, I had to make money. I had savings, but I had to,
and I treated it like, you know, if you go to university, you spend three years or four years
or five years studying and you're paying X amount each year with the goal that when you come out the
other side, you're going to be earning money, but you're effectively gambling on yourself because
you're putting money into your education that you have to pay back eventually.
And the outcome is at the end of a career. And I said, well, I'm doing the university of competition
climbing. That's an interesting way of putting it.
Never thought of it like that. I put some of my own money against it to begin with
and set myself a goal that I had to be making money within three years, like a living wage
within three years, or I was going to call it and go do something else. And the first couple of years
were at times brutal, but probably 18 months, I was making money. And then I went to college.
And for 18 months, I was making money, you know, making a living money, not just making some money.
So it worked out. And at the end of 2014, the IFSC came to me and said, look, you know, you're at all
these comps. Do you want to be our official photographer? Because we actually don't want
the official photographer to be team affiliated anymore because it does create a conflict of
interest, obviously. And I said, well, you know, what's in it for me? And what's in it for me wasn't
much. But it was improved access. And that was enough to go, well, okay, the improved access
actually gives me an angle that the other guys don't have. So yeah, I went and I actually stopped
doing the magazine because I was just too busy. So I only ever did two issues of that. And then
I got too busy, got myself a bunch of clients and just, you know, as you can see by the wall
behind me did quite a few World Cups. And that's not even all. Well, that's pretty much all of them.
But of course, some of those are season passes. So some of those count for a whole year.
But then there's also a studio block passes, quiff passes, other events,
Deport a Solo events, all sorts of different, you know, I used to keep a spreadsheet of all the World
Cups I've attended and all the events I've attended. And I think it's about 150 international events I
shot. So it was, yeah, it was, you know, a great way to get perspective on a sport and a great way to
to become part of a community and really do your own little bit to build it up. Because
I think I was, I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but I was kind of beloved by the athletes because
if you were
sort of amigasa, I was going to be taking photos of you. But if you were Katrin Van Selling down
the other end of the field, I was going to be taking photos of her as well. So no matter where
you were in the thing, I would put in the mahi and just do incredible hours to shoot all through the
field. You know, I had disputes with the IFSC over that, because they wanted photos fast. And they're
like, oh, we'll just do the top 20 in qualifying and then go and edit them. And I'm like, well,
no, because the top 20, of course, are important. But if you're a climber from New Zealand or the
US or wherever, and it's your first World Cup, and it might be your only World Cup, and afterwards,
you go out and you won't get any photos and everyone's like, nah. Like, you know, it's easy
for us when you live in rarefied air to think of, you know, it's only the top percent matter. But
you've got to remember every single person at that World Cup is in the top percent of wherever they
come from. You know, even if the Pakistani dude that's struggling to get up the speed wall,
they've made it all the way from Pakistan to get up that speed wall. That's an achievement in the
South and they deserve the recognition at some level. They deserve the same giving of time and
treatment as, you know, a Yanya or a Tomoa. So I think that very quickly sort of got me on side of
a lot of the climbers. And then I sort of became, because I'm a generation older than the climbers,
I became sort of the unofficial driver-fixer-organiser for Team Other Guys. And that was a big part of it as well,
because Team Other Guys was never a real team. Team Other Guys was the nickname we used to give
to the people that were from federations that were too small to have a coordinated effort going to
each World Cup. So it'd be the one or two climbers doing it on their own back from this country,
that country. And, you know, for instance, it might be going to Miringen, I might have a car
full of Swedes and Israelis and a couple of Australians or something. And I would have booked
an Airbnb because it was easier to pool the resources. And a lot of the athletes are under 25.
And so rental cars and accommodation and that can be more challenging.
Yeah. And yeah, we'll get into those athletes' stories in a bit. But yeah, that was like quite a journey just for yourself.
And so going back to just like when you signed on to IFSC, I didn't really realize this before,
but a lot of people who do work for IFSC are just freelance and getting paid doing one-off gigs.
Did you have like a regular contract with them or were you still like a freelance?
So I was a contractor, but I was contract annually. So I was contracted to do all the World Cups for
X amount of money. And it was a year to year rolling contract. But yeah, so the same as like
Obsessed Media or people like that. So I was never part of the IFSC. I was always a contractor to the IFSC.
And yeah, basically spent half of my life butting heads with them because although there's a lot of
well-meaning people there, I think anytime you work with an organization, they can have a different
perspective. And sometimes you need to actually sit there and have dialogue with them and go,
well, you know, this is why this is important. This is why that's important. There was a number of
comps that they wouldn't assign me to that I'd just show up to because for me, it felt important
for the athletes to be there. And it was almost like an afterthought for the IFSC. And then they're
like, oh, good, you're here. Well, can you take photos? It's like, well, that's what I'm here for.
Well, like why weren't you contracted for those to begin with?
They were just kind of oversights. Like, you know, when we had Youth Olympics in 2018,
you'd think it would be a huge deal because it was our first Olympic appearance down in Buenos Aires.
And they hired a videographer to do like a highlights video, but they didn't look at anyone
doing photos. Same with World Games in 2017. And so for both of those, I got my own accreditation
and then said, well, what are you doing about these comps? And they said, oh,
we haven't thought of those. Can you come? And I'm like, yeah, I can come because I got my
you know, I've already done all the legwork and got everything ready. And I'd just step in. And
so in the end, they always used me, but I was doing those because I was contracted to do World
Cups and World Champs and anything that wasn't a World Cup or World Champs, anything that was
effectively run by a different body to the IFSC. For a long time, they sort of just assumed, well,
I guess there'll be photographers there. And the problem with that is you might only have non
climbing photographers and they might be good or they might be absolutely terrible. You don't know
until you see it. And, you know, I've been lucky enough that most of those occasions
worked with really good people like the other photographers on the ground.
Because if you're a photographer, you tend to look at other people's work
to go, OK, I'm going in to do this sport or whatever it is. Where do people normally stand?
What's the net? You know, I wouldn't say we're copycats, but we take inspiration from each other
because you don't want to go to a sport and learn the ropes and then look at your photos and go,
oh, wow, they're all last shots. Yeah.
And so I'd turn up at a lot of these events and a lot of the local photographers or the other
sport photographers would be, oh, my goodness, you know, can you tell us what you know and how
do we do these shots? Well, and stuff. And it's always very sharing and friendly in those
environments because everyone wants a good end product. So being a photographer is incredibly
competitive. It's like a sport in itself. But you all want each other to do OK. You want to be the
best, but you want each other to do OK. And I'd had experience of that in motorsport and in
athletics and things like that prior to climbing. So I was familiar with it, you know, back in the
day shooting Speedway GP in Auckland, which is the motorbikes on dirt. And there was one photographer
booth and all the accredited photographers were there. And I went and sat down, started chatting
to them and I wasn't accredited. And then we're taking photos of the racers and about halfway
through security turned up and said, oh, you don't have a vest on, you can't be here. And the other
photographers all said, oh, no, he's one of us. He's just left his vest on the other side of the
track. And next time, make sure you wear your vest. And so, you know, there was always a
pretty friendly and dynamic around photographers. And same with things like Sydney Track,
classic taking photos of athletics where you had people like a Safer pal and that running and,
you know, people can, photographers can tell a hobbyist from a professional. And if you're a
professional, they tend to help out even if you're a hobbyist, they'll help out, but they're probably
a bit more limited in the time they'll give you. But it's, you know, it's a art in itself and a
challenge in itself. And yeah, we had a lot of fun, I shouldn't use the real way because it's just me,
but had a lot of fun, you know, learning the ropes and learning the dynamics and
some places are territorial. That was always interesting. When I first went to World Cups,
I almost got in a fight the first year I was in Slovenia, Log Dragon Mare, because the Slovenian
security would only let local photographers into a good area, wouldn't let the foreign
photographers into a good area. And I said, well, no, if I can go there, I can go there. And the guy
said, well, no, you're not from Slovenia. And I said, I don't care where I'm from. This is for
the international audience. And I went to go through and he blocked me and I didn't appreciate
that and just went, you know, if you put your hand on me again, there's going to be issues. And the
technical delegate at the time, legendary guy called Graham Alderson, he was just, if you ever
want to interview anyone, Graham is the man. I mean, he was the judge at the first ever World Cup
and was then technical delegate for years right up until the Olympics, basically. And has more
experience as technical delegate than anyone. And he saw me squaring up this guy and ran over and
was like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I was like, he's not going to tell me that.
And he's like, yeah, please don't start a fight. I'm like, okay.
So did you manage to get in or?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had a quiet word to the security guy and said, you know, your job is to
stop non-people getting in, non-official people getting in, not official people getting in. And
don't look at the ethnicity, look at the badge. So there was always things like that. The first
couple of years, it was a bit more cowboy-esque in the first couple of years. And I was like,
cowboy-esque in the first couple of years. It was really, you know, some of those early World Cups.
Azerbaijan, we just passed the 10 year anniversary of, and I don't know if you saw Udo Neumann was
doing a bunch of stories about, as was I, the most bonkers World Cup of all time. I've never
seen so much corruption. I've never seen just so much plain bonkersness. Because we all flew from
the World Cup in China straight to Azerbaijan, because you ain't going to fly back to Europe.
And so we got there on like the Tuesday and the World Cup was like, so they Sunday. And
they've never been a World Cup in, or they'd been a Speed World Cup, but there'd never been a
Boulder World Cup in Azerbaijan. And Azerbaijan, Baku is the capital and it means windy city. And
the venue was out on this peninsula over the Caspian Sea and was super windy. And so they
had a roof over the venue, but the roof was buckling from the wind. So they had to take the roof
down. So then you had, again, it was four freestanding boulders, but they were exposed to the sun.
So you're in a desert, incredibly windy, climbing boulders in the sun. And they had just bought the
most expensive holds they could see online for the World Cup, because they had no idea what was what.
So when Jackie got off and the setting crew all got out there and opened up all these boxes,
it was like the entrepree kids alphabet set. Oh, really? Jungle gyms and stuff. So they were
sending out a desperate message to all the climbers that hadn't got there yet to fill any
spare space in their bags with holds from their gyms. And when they got to the World Cup, take them
to the route setters so that the route setters could run in and change the climbs and put real
holds on. So you had, you know, Killian Fishhuber flies over with half his luggage full of spare
holds from the odd wall in Innsbruck. And then they said to Jackie, you know, okay, it's really
important because we're in the wrecked sun. If you can sit the woman's boulders in the shade in the
morning and the men's boulders in the shade in the afternoon. So Jackie does just that. And then
they swap the order. So woman are in the sun in the afternoon and men are in the sun in the morning.
And they had all the prize money, like $10,000 US dollars sitting in a case.
Cash.
Just cash. Except it did disappear and no one got paid.
Seriously.
So it took the IFSC literal years to reclaim the money from them because they effectively tried to
do a run-over without paying anyone. And in the days leading up to the World Cup, all of us in
the hotel, they come knocking on our door every morning and they'd take us and put us in these
complimentary tour buses to do complimentary tours. And they were all logoed up buses. And you're in
this bus going out to, we went out to see these petroglyphs about two hours out of Baku. And
there's checkpoints on the road and you get to the checkpoint and you got minders and they call
the minister of sport or whatever and pass the phone to the police guy and the thing. And
minister of sports says, yes, he's allowed to go through and then pass the phone back and we can
go through the next checkpoint. So it felt very sort of behind the iron curtain-esque.
And we got out to these petroglyphs and it was beautiful. Looked like Waco tanks or
Rocklands or something. You just wanted to go climbing there. But we went to that to climb
there, of course, because it was petroglyphs. But what they didn't mention is that to make it
easy for tourists that already picked up all the rocks of petroglyphs and put them together.
And then coming back, we got back to the minibus. There's the driver, then myself, then Udo Neumann
in the front and then all the athletes. So Alex Puccio, Jan Hoyer, basically half the world's top
climbers in the back of this minibus. And the driver was stinking drunk and he was falling
asleep at the wheel. And we'd be going along and I'd have to grab the wheel to keep us on the road
because he'd start to veer off the road. And we were shouting at the minders, you know,
I can drive, let me drive. And they're like, oh no, you can't drive because if you drive,
he loses face and that's very bad for him. And so he stopped the bus and poured a bottle of water
over his head to sober himself up and then just drove the rest of the way back in. And we're all
like, we're all going to die. This is like most of the best climbers in the world and, you know,
best competition climbers at that stage in the world. And we're all like, we're going to get
killed because someone doesn't want to lose face in this autocratic regime. And so the whole thing
was crazy. And at the end, we went down to pay and they wanted to pay us back. And we were like,
they wanted 25 euros a day for the complimentary activities that they'd made us go on. And because
most of the teams pay by team credit card, the credit card surcharge was 18%. And a lot of the
teams said, well, we're not paying, that's a ripoff. And they said, well, we'll call the airport and
you won't leave the country. So they basically rents on the climbers to. Yeah. So you guys just
paid it? Yeah, of course. What can you do? But yeah, so that was sort of like the wild west days
of earlier world cups. And it was very different to how polished they are now. So we never went back
to Azerbaijan. Okay. That was a very, okay. So complete other story. So we're sitting on the
plane to Azerbaijan. And if you've looked at my photos recently, you'll see a photo of James
Cassay standing there in a red t-shirt and everyone else being in black business suits. They're always
these hardened central Asian step businessmen coming out of China, back to Azerbaijan. And
they don't see many blonde girls. So we were in quote unquote business class. We just got upgraded.
It was Shauna, Mina Leslie, Wajastic and myself. And we're sat in this line of seats and these guys
are coming up and they're just staring at the blonde girls, just like the on display in a zoo,
just walking up, standing in the aisle, just no shame and just staring at them. And then one of
the guys effectively tries to buy me. He says, you know, I'll give you X amount of money. Come
live with me and be my wife. Oh, wow. That's so scary. So we were like, this is the most messed up
crazy, like culture shock of all culture shocks. You know, totalitarian regime, policemen with a gun
on every corner of every street. Yeah. And so that was sort of like World Cups back in the day. You
had like Europe, which was like the center, which was really well organized and already really big
and professional. And then you had Asia, which I'd say was close, but lagging behind. You had the US
that was not even close, but felt that they were the best in the world. And then you had just these
other randoms that were always like, what are we going to get now? So, and the US has come a
hugely long way, but the thing with the US, so I don't mean to disrespect them as they wanted to
do things their way, not the IFC way. So there was always sort of a clash of cultures when the World
Cup got to US because like, well, no, this is how we do it. And it's like, sigh. Oh, what was the
issue there? Just style, just everything. Just, it was just a cultural clash, the US had their way of
doing comps and we had ours. I don't know if you're around back in the day when the US, they didn't
have it at the World Cups, but they had their own scoring system that was really obscure and
opaque and like no one could figure it out. And I don't know what that system is. What was it?
Back in the early 40s, they had this thing where you got points per hold and then points for the
top. But then if anyone else did the boulder problem, those points divided and it was, you
needed a maths degree or a magician degree just to do the comps. And at one stage, because I was
doing the magazine and the social media and I wrote an article basically criticising their system,
saying, look, this is just, you know, to me, the simpler the system, the better, because you want,
as a spectator, you don't want to have to be doing calculations on who won. You want to
okay, you got three tops in the zone. Okay, Stas, you got three tops, but no zone. Okay, you won.
But I wrote an article back in 2015, I guess it was, and I basically criticised the US scoring
system and USA climbing banned me from taking photos of comps in the US until I had like a long
meeting with women and had to apologise. And, you know, I didn't want to get banned. I was just
saying I didn't agree with your system. And I have a lot of respect for what those guys did for the
sport. But I do think they fixated on a system that wasn't, wasn't preparing their athletes for
international competition. Because when you do a really crazy system, and you'd see it, then
that turn up to World Cups, and they'll do badly because they weren't thinking, I just need to get
the zone. Okay, I just need to get the top. Okay, you know, they, there's tactics that come into a
World Cup. And those tactics were different under their system to. So when the World Cups came to
the US, it would have to be the US system with like the no, no, when the World Cups came, they
were always the World Cup system. Because, you know, none of us are good enough at math to do the
American system. So it was always but um, it was always the, the IFSC system, which in itself has
changed, obviously, massively over the last decade and a bit 15 years, whatever. You know, we used
to have four plus, then we went to four flat, we used to have tops, meaning everything in zones,
not and then zones got more important. You know, now they have the Olympic system, and then they
have the Olympic system with numbers, there's all sorts of modifications to the scoring and to the
the actual format that have happened over 15 years. And I don't agree with all of them,
I agree with some of them. But you know, I see what they're trying to do to,
to speed up the sport and make it more
understandable to a casual viewer, which I think is important. But I think the flip side is you
need to respect the intelligence of viewers and that if you explain something to them,
they will figure it out.
Do you think like the current system is pretty decent then in terms of understanding and simplicity?
Yeah, for the most part, I have some issues around tops and zones. But that's not the
problem. I have some issues around tops and zones. But that's just a personal thing.
In that, so say you have a final, and two of the boulders are doable and two of the boulders
are really crazy, not really doable. And so say you had someone comes out and flashes the
two doable boulders, but then it's a desperate dino on the other two and they don't get zoned.
And then you get someone that comes out and they take 10 attempts to get to the top on the other
on the two boulders, but they're good at jumping. So they fluke his own on the other one. And
suddenly they win because, but because of one move, you know, it's, I prefer that I preferred it when
they went, they used to score number of tops attempt to top, then zones and attempts to zone
as a tiebreaker, not number of tops and number of zones and attempts then. And for me, that was the
system I preferred, but that's just me. I was also always have been always will be a huge advocate of
four plus. I much prefer four plus to four minutes because I hate seeing athletes walk off the clock
with time on the clock, walk off the mats with time on the clock. There used to be something about that
a four plus round because four plus basically meant that you had four minutes to do the boulder,
but if you were off the ground when your four minutes finished, your attempt only ended when
you hit the ground. Yeah, I thought that was fun. It was fantastic because you had this tactic
about running the clock down, trying to like save energy and jumping on with like 10 seconds to go.
Yeah. And then like, you know, there was a couple of cases that were pretty funny, like
Sekuru Hori and Grindelwald in 2014 being perched at the top of a boulder for about five minutes,
just trying to get across and trying to get the match. But it was just pure drama because he was
wedged in the corner and this finish was just out of reach for his height and he's trying to get the
body position. You know, it wasn't boring. It was thrilling. And you had Melissa Laniv in the World
Cup that was Petra's only World Cup win. And she got into this dihedral and was just camped there
trying to get something back one move before the top and the crowd, you know, all three of us were
going wild. And then she fell still going for the top. And so that was like amazing. You had,
I've got this great photo of Margot Hayes at this comp in the US, the second hold on the comp was
this huge volume and Margot jumped on and then just lay over the volume like a ragdoll and just
lay right on her stomach and just lay there for about four minutes recovering. But it was just,
it was theatre. It was so exciting to watch. And yeah, so I miss that format because there's,
and I know now the flip side is you got buzzer beaters like, you know, Simon Lorenz a couple
of years ago in Brixton or wherever it was just beating the buzzer. Lots of good buzzers. So there
is a counter argument and I respect the counter argument, but for me, I preferred the four plus
because it really gave it a sense of like drama and last attempt means all. And it was a lot of
fun, but I, you know, I do understand why they moved it for, they didn't, you know, if you're
going to be on Eurosport, you don't, you want roughly to be able to time your final. You don't
want half the climbers spending eight minutes on a final problem because it's going to skew your
whole scheduling. Of course the flip side is if you have a final like Salt Lake where everyone's
flashing, then it skews the scheduling the other way because it gets too short. I guess that kind
of reminds me of how people say that cricket is like a really long game. I've never watched it,
but I just, I've heard people talk about how it can go on for days or something like that. Yeah.
A test match is five days. Yes. Yeah. I don't really know how that works for broadcast TV,
but alcohol. You, you sit there with a beer in your hand and you have it on in the background
and it's not, you know, even odd equivolated to baseball in the U S like baseball is a very slow
game to watch. Never watch it. So, yeah. So I mean, but some sports just aren't fast sports to watch.
You know, I enjoy watching tour de France, you know, absolutely love watching tour de France,
but guess what? Tour de France is slow to watch cause they're in the saddle six hours every day.
But if you're watching with a good commentator, it's still fascinating cause you,
and this is where commentary is king. Cause a good commentator can carry over the slow things.
But yeah, I absolutely love some sports that are actually very slow to watch. You know,
I'll sit down and watch a six hour motor race or a 24 hour motor race. Not the whole thing. I will
go to sleep in the middle, but I'll have it on the background all day while I'm up doing something
and just follow what happens. It's not every sport needs to be rushed. And I think the difference
between four and four plus was so small that they could have quite comfortably done four plus,
you know, a golf tournament. Well, how long is it golf tournament? Three days.
You don't know cause you don't watch golf. Yeah, I don't watch it. You know, and the thing is,
if you got good, how long is an American football game? Four hours and about two minutes of action.
There's something about football that I do enjoy. I can't really describe why.
I love watching football, but I love watching football because it's like,
it's just the distilled essence of American sport. It's all bravado and heroism and tactics. And
it's kind of, you get these huge behemoths who, whole existence is to run out in the field, crash
into each other and then waddle off the field slightly slower and rest for 10 minutes. Like
it's actually a bonkers sport. So it's like, you get, it's a ball sport where so many people's job
is to never even touch the ball. You know, compare that to soccer or rugby or something like that.
It'd be like having climbing where half the climbers never touched the climb.
It doesn't make sense. It's like, you know, it's like, you know,
it's like, you know, it's like, so, but there is a spectacle to it that makes it attractive
and the commentary makes it attractive. You know, commentary, as I said, is King because,
and this is where Charlie was brilliant because he was a student of commentary. He had his podcast
where he would talk to other commentators and follow their, their advice and stuff. And you know,
Matt is great at what he does, but he's never going to be the commentator for me
because he's the commentator for the everyman and because of my experience in the sport,
I'll never be the everyman. So I much prefer the color commentators because they tend to have the
insight and that's what I'm after. I tend to find that people kind of just prefer the commentator
that they started watching competitions in. So like people who started watching during Charlie's era
prefer his commentary and then people who started watching during Matt's era prefer his commentary.
So you can only say that about the last couple of commentators. Right, yeah. Some of the ones before
that, lovely guys, but guys like Johnny Bryan who was basically a professional snooker commentator
was a challenging listener. He had no real interest in climbing, never learned the terminology,
never, you know, he could commentate anything as a professional commentator, but zero insight,
zero perspective, zero sort of relaying the actual difficulty. Well, so I kind of got a bit of a taste
of that because Matt had me co-commentate for women's semis in China and it didn't, it was,
I mean, I never, my goal was never to do commentary. Like I always knew it would be really
difficult, but I was like, I can't say no to an opportunity. I wouldn't say it went super well,
but I got some nice messages from people who listened to the podcast, which was really nice.
I enjoyed it. I thought it was good. It's, as I said, I tend to prefer the color commentators,
which is nothing against Matt. Matt is holding it down for the casual listener. I, on the other hand,
I'm much more interested for the other people. Yeah, I do agree that who you come in with and
are familiar with as a commentator does make a big difference. For myself, I'm used to Matt as being
the Epic TV guy. I always loved that. And I find he's a bit too cherry-chappy for me, but that's just,
everyone has their own take. And I've done some commentary and commentary is hard. Sure is.
Yes. I used to go to Doc Masters in the Netherlands, which is a fantastic comp.
And they had me as their commentator. And it's funny because when they first contacted me, I
thought, oh, you know, go take photos. Fine. They're like, no, we want you to commentate.
Because I'd heard some unofficial commentary I'd done at an event another time. And they wanted me
on. And it's funny because you get half of people love you, the other half hate you. And it's much
more emotionally draining than being a photographer because the immediate feedback you get is pretty
direct and sometimes brutal. And like my accent or people thought I was too chummy about the
athletes or people thought I was too hard on other athletes because I give them a wind up. And
you know, everyone's going to have their take. And in different cultures, commentary is different.
So the commentary I give as a Kiwi is going to be probably less, I wouldn't say less respectful
because you've got a massive amount of respect for them, but probably a little bit more honest
and cutting than say an American commentator who is trying to paint everyone in a very positive light.
You know, if I know someone's climbing behind their level or is stuffed because I can see that their
shoulders are blowing and they're in trouble, I'm going to say, oh, I don't think they're going to
get this problem because look at their shoulders, they're gone. You know, and people are like, oh,
that's not a very nice thing to say. And it's like, well, that's just an observation as a
commentator, you know. But that all came about from a very surreal experience. So years ago,
Munich, definitely one of the biggest World Cups, I think the biggest World Cups ever were in Munich.
And they used to at Boulder-Valton, Munich, they used to have a simulation semi a few days before.
And so a lot of the World Cup climbers had turned up and it was like an unofficial World Cup almost.
It was a lot of fun. And one year I was there, I didn't feel like climbing, but I was there.
And one year I was there, I didn't feel like taking photos. So I got my phone out and started
videoing and was just doing a one-man broadcast on Facebook Live and just talking shit and filming
this thing. And this is back when Facebook was king of the platforms and they used to have
Facebook recommended and everything. And I looked down, there's 150,000 people watching.
Wow. Because it had gone on the Facebook recommended page and just people from all over who had no idea
about climbing were clicking on and watching. And here's me just shit talking basically,
just thinking there's 20 people watching and it was all mates. And then I looked at it's like 150,000.
Did you say anything you shouldn't have said? Oh, many things. But it was all meant good
naturedly. It was all in jest. It was a lighthearted event. But it was just funny that after that I got
contacted by people that wanted me to commentate because I actually liked the style. And I was like,
okay, I'll take that. And because I've been around a long time, I knew the athletes well,
so I could sort of do the colour side as well because I knew what was going on. I don't know
how long you've been watching, whether it was before your time or not. But Charlie used to
get me to do the post-event interviews. So now they get the assistant, the colour commentator,
to run down and do them. But back in the day, Charlie wasn't really able to leave for Booth.
And he didn't want to leave the colour commentator in the Booth to talk on their own for five minutes
where I went to wrangle the athletes. And I was always at the front because I'm taking photos,
and then I'm standing around waiting for the podium. So the idea was, well, okay, pass me the
mic and I'll do the questions. And even that, you do the questions and you think that came
came off really well. And Charlie's like that came off really well. Then you read online. And so I was
like, what was that guy asking? What an idiot. People are brutal. Yeah, yeah. People have zero
empathy if they think that the person is not going to have any form of rejoinder. And sadly,
I sometimes had a form of rejoinder because I'd definitely hit people up if I knew who they were
and say, dude, what the hell? You try it. It's not that easy. Yeah. But it was, yeah, look,
it was a blast. What can you say? The whole thing. I spent nearly a decade in the sport
until COVID killed it. And it was a blast. Yeah. So going back to photography, since I still had a
couple of questions about that. I think you had also mentioned that you think there are
too many photographers nowadays at comps. How many do you think is too many? And like,
what were some of the issues that come with that? Well, that's a tricky one to answer without
offending people. But to be honest, I think if the answer is correct, that people shouldn't be
offended. See, the challenge here is that I think photographers need to be able to earn a living
taking photos. That's why you're a photographer. If you have too many people taking photos,
you split the pie into too many pieces. And therefore, people can't actually survive doing
it. So you end up crushing the full-time photographers and being left with a bunch of hobbyists.
So I think that they have to limit it to the extent that the professionals can be professional.
If they have, say at any given World Cup, say there's $20,000, 20,000 euros, whatever,
and photographic sales to be made, and then they put 50 photographers in, then if they're all trying
to sell their photos, that devalues all the photos, because any given photographer might be getting
$500. But if you have half a dozen photographers, then that half a dozen photographers can make
enough money that they can go to the next event and keep taking photos. For me, speaking outside
of the box a bit here, but I'd almost like to see two photography areas, which I think would work
really well, which would be for your pros and your hobbyists. And you could actually sell a hobbyist
photographer ticket with the condition that none of their photos get used for commercial purposes.
But if they're an enthusiastic photographer, because a lot of people love taking photos or climbing,
it is a passion of theirs. And you say, well, look, you're welcome to, as long as you sign this
saying that you're not going to sell your photos, you're welcome to. But if you're not going to sell
as long as you sign this saying that you're not going to sell them, and you're going to have this
area, which isn't quite as good as the main photographer's area, but you'll have, because
as I said, for a while you had every Tom, Dick and Harry was using a press pass just to get into the
cops. Yeah, that seems a bit extreme. And that was sort of like the overkill of it. Whereas some
World Cups you go to, there's still very few photographers. So I don't think you want to
overregulate and push out the photographers where you want them. So it's a case of balancing. And
I would say, yeah, if you had at the bigger events like Innsbruck or
Chamonix or wherever, if you had two photographer areas and you had your established pros,
and then you had a hobbyist and those hobbyists might want to be pros, but so it gives them a
way to learn the trade. Because you don't want to be elitist and just cut people off, but you want to
you don't also want to screw your professionals. So it's
one of those things, as I said, photography is competitive. We're all trying to get pieces of
the same pie and the pie generally isn't that big. And if you get more people trying to get pieces of
that pie, then the amount of pie goes down for everyone. Okay.
Because there's always going to be that person or those people that undermine it because they're
trying to get into the industry. So I think, well, if I lower my price or give away photos even
just to get the prestige, then I'll get in. But they're actually damaging the sport because what
they're doing is they're devaluing the people that set a value on their work.
Yeah, that makes sense. And well, so you got like some special privileges as like the official IFC
photographer, because, for example, like for lead, you get to shoot from other areas of the wall or
like the top of the wall or something like that. Never really the top of the wall.
Not since the old days in Brionson, that used to be wonderful. Now, Jan Vert uses a remote camera
occasionally, which is good. I used to do that occasionally in speed, but that was the only time.
Used to shoot speed occasionally from the top. The big advantage more than anything was in the
bouldering. We used to have a rule that as long as I was two problems away from the wall, I would
be on the mats. So normally I'd be, you'd have your videographer crew, your broadcast crew would be on
the mats and I'd be next to them on one side of the other, moving back and forth with them,
getting the angles because the videographer guys are normally getting similar angles to what I'm
wanting to be shooting. Or if they saw me on the other side, they'd realize that I'm not shooting
getting similar angles to what I'm wanting to be shooting. Or if they saw me on the other side,
they'd realize I had a better angle and come and join me. So yeah, that was a thing where,
yeah, it was basically mat access because for a lot of World Cups back in the early days,
you couldn't shoot from beside the mats because the way a lot of the walls were constructed,
they might have walls on either side of the wall. So automatically you're shooting in on the wall,
which is flattening the climbers. And so the advantage of having that access, as I said,
in the early days, you could shoot from anywhere and it was a free for all. But as it got more
structured, then you'd get around on the mats. Because then you can see the degree of overhang,
you can see how poor the slopers are and things like that. When you're shooting across the side
or something, because you got a profile, you're like, wow, that slope is really bad. You're
shooting it from the back and you see their hand just like that, you're like, well, that could be
a jug for all I can see. So that was the big advantage there was just having that. And plus,
I had to support my drinking game guys down in Texas. So shout out to them. There was a bunch of
climbers that had a drinking game that whenever I appeared on the live stream, they had to have a
shot. And once I found out that game was going, I tried to make sure I appeared in the edge of
shot as often as possible. Oh my gosh. I feel like I would not want to appear on the live stream.
It wasn't always flattering. I don't have the best physique. I'm not a young trim climber like a lot
of these kids are. I'm a 50 year old man. So I was in my 40s then and I looked like a dude in my 40s.
And that was, sometimes you'd see yourself walk past the back of shot. You'd be like, oh my goodness,
I need to go to a gym. But I'm pretty comfortable being in front of a crowd because they're not
looking at me. They're looking at the climber. So it used to sometimes be surreal when you're
at a big event, a veil back in the day when you'd have several thousand people in the meadow watching
the climbing and you're up front taking photos and you look sideways and you're like, wow,
that's a whole lot of people. You know, 2019 veil, they wanted everyone to do this
Eiffel Tower symbol for, we were trying to get in the Olympics for 2024. And their proposal was
going before the IOC and the IFSC came up to me and said, can you get photos of people doing this
to look like the Eiffel Tower? And I was like, wow, that sounds kind of lame and terrible. But,
and I got photos of some of the athletes doing it. It just looked embarrassing and uncomfortable.
And I went back to the IFSC and I said, look, I know there's a break in finals
between the first two and the last two problems because there's always a break for adverts.
I said, can I use that to get on stage and get the crowd to do the symbol and I'll get
3000, 4000 people doing it, not just one or two awkward looking embarrassed climbers.
And they were like, well, you can do it, but who's going to announce it? And I was like,
well, I'll announce it. I'll get up and just tell them what I want to do. And they're like,
you can't do that. I'm like, why not? I'm just picking up a mic and saying, do this.
And if you watch back that footage of Vail 2019 in the men's final, I get up halfway through and
take the mic off the EMC and say, okay, I want everyone to do this. And we ended up with probably
close to 4000 people and it just looks like every single person's doing it. And they're just
receding into the distance and they're all doing the, and that was a huge kick. You know, that was,
yeah, I'll try to link that in the description so people can see. I feel like you're talking
about the athletes looking awkward doing it kind of reminds me of, sometimes they try to get the
athletes to do like short videos where they're doing like a pose or something. So demeaning.
I mean, I think it's kind of fun. I want, I just wish they weren't as like embarrassed to do it
because I feel like it could be good. I think the thing is when they've started doing it,
the athletes didn't really know what they were going to be used for or done. And so you ended
up with like a Kia with a banana on her head for a season or something. You know, you end up with
some stupid ones in the early days because the athletes were just playing around. They had no
concept of what they were being asked to do. They thought it was just like, now do something funny
for us. And then they're like, oh my goodness, that's for the whole season. Now I think the
athletes are more familiar with, but the whole walk out and go, and the camera is just kind of
cheesy and a bit, I don't know, for me, it's like, I'd rather just a nice photo of them,
like a clean portrait. They don't do that anymore. Do they? I just, it stood out to me when they did
it for like burn world champs, they shot like a quick, I don't know, few second thing for each
climber and it was, it was fun. Yeah. It's, I can't remember it being regular anymore. So maybe they
have stopped it on the whole, but it used to be a, it was a little bit more like a, you know,
pretty, it used to be this annoying thing because I'd do it at the first world cup of the year and
I'd try and get like every athlete to do it. And I'd take a portrait of every athlete that was there
as well. Then you turn up at the next world cup and then another part of the world, there's a whole
different set of athletes. And you're like, all right, there's this whole thing again, you know,
not the easiest process. And, you know, for me taking portraits of athletes used to be,
because they used to say, take portraits of the athletes. I go, okay, but there's a lot of
athletes. Oh, well, we only want portraits of the top 10. I'm like, okay, but what happens when
someone who's not in the top 10 makes finals? Oh, well then you just get a portrait of them.
But the thing is going into a season, you don't know who your top 10 is going to be because
you haven't seen them climbing yet. You don't know who's where in their
state of preparation and their state of play. And so yeah, I used to go in and say, okay,
I'll get everyone and I'd do 120 portraits. And then, you know, or sometimes more might be 120
guys and 120 girls. And then you're like, okay, that's my next couple of months done editing,
because you had to cut the backgrounds out. And, you know, that was on top of your usual work. And
then you look on the IFSC website and they got all the portraits up next to the wrong athlete. And
it used to be an adventure and chaos. It was, yeah, you know, there's so many things that you take
for granted as a spectator, but you don't think, well, people have to work really hard behind the
scenes to make all these things happen. Right. Yeah. Simple as portraits. And it's funny because
you read the critics and they're always like, why aren't they doing that? And it's like, well,
they're not doing that because it really takes a lot of effort and time. And these people are
trying to do everything. You know, the obsessed media guys, I don't know if they're still the
official media crew, I assume they are, but they, you know, they have to do everything to do with
live video. And then back in the day, when I was the only official photographer, I had to do
everything to do a photography. And you had a bunch of different requests at every comp for,
and as I said, the IFSC was never paying much. It was more of it. I was getting access and that
allowed myself to then go to companies and say, can you, will you work with me? Because what I
tend to do is I don't sell photos after events. I, at the beginning of a season, or anytime in a
season, but normally at the beginning or before a season, I talk with all the companies and they
agree to pay me X amount for the year. And then I provide them a folder of photos of their athletes
from each event that they can then do whatever works. So they don't have to buy individual
photos. They pay me X thousand euros a year. And then they always have, that's much easier than
trying to sell individual photos. You try and sell individual photos and half your life is spent on
heart. The other half of your life is spent chasing invoices that haven't been paid.
There's a lot goes into it. There's a lot of, you know, having all your batteries charged,
having all your SD cards empty, having enough, you know, over all those events,
not including the photos I deleted because I deleted ones that weren't good.
I ended up with more than 600,000 photos. So that's in my keeper pile,
you know, more than half a million photos in my keeper pile. But the great thing about that is
someone goes, Oh, I want a photo of Yanya from 2015. I'm like, here you go. I want a photo of
Arianne from 2019. Here you go. You know, you've got the whole history of an athlete. So as they
evolve and develop, you might want to do a historical piece on them. And you're like,
well, yeah, okay, I've got that. You know, I used to be big on shooting youth worlds and youth comps
where I could as well, because I'm like, well, that's the next generation of World Cup climbers
and having that whole track. And it's funny when you work with youth, because you can,
you can tell your enormous natural talents. But you can also tell your absolutely hungry
athletes that may not be as naturally talented, but will succeed because they're just bloody
minded and want nothing more than to be the best. And you can tell you're, well, they're really
talented, but they're not going to last because, yikes, you know, they, they're distracted by shiny
things, athletes as well. You know, and that's always a real shame. And you want to sit down with
some of them and have a talk and say, you're enormously talented. I know that the opposite
gender or the same gender, whatever it may be, are attractive, but you can date on the side.
You don't have to quit comp climbing just to... Oh, that's what you're talking about?
Oh yeah. Well, because these guys, these are teenagers. And to be a professional athlete,
you sacrifice being a teenager, you sacrifice being a normal developing person because,
oh, we're going to a party tonight. Well, I can't, because I've got training tomorrow morning,
or I can't because I've got training this afternoon. And I'm not going to be able to
do that. And you've got to make life choices that aren't the same as any other teenager.
And, you know, I've coached as well for a long time and I've lost kids that I coached to being
teenagers. And you can't say, well, that's not right because some people just want to life.
Some people... Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's understandable and normal.
So, you know, I had a phenomenal athlete when I was coaching back at the turn of a century,
a very good young climber. And she was probably the best climber at that time New Zealand had
ever had as a potential. And when she hit 16 and her body made all the, I've just hit 16 changes,
and boys started to notice her and other things got more interesting. And that was it. She was
gone. And it was like, you know, what a loss, but she had a great life. She's a wonderful person.
You know, we're still friends today, but her path changed. Climbing wasn't the priority that those
of us that are lifers really wanted it to be. Interesting. I never thought about dating within
the climbing community, I guess, and how that affects people's entire trajectories.
Well, yeah, or dating outside of the climbing community more to the point, because if you're
dating a non-climber and they're like, oh, we just want to go to that party. Oh, well, I'm training
you. And, oh, we'll just come to that, you know, and it's just those little voices in the air. But
the influence on climbers, you can't say enough about how much pressure and how many influences
climbers are under. You know, obviously there's been this big thing about Red S lately.
It's been a long standing issue in the sport. We've been aware of it for a very long time, but
I would say it's been more problematic in the last half decade than it maybe was beforehand.
Oh really? Why's that?
Just, it just seems to be a bit more prevalent because I think the style has changed and
if you're a little power limpet that weighs nothing, you can hold on forever and hold anything.
Well, I guess I thought it would actually be the other way around. Since now it's so much more like
power and just like.
Yeah, it's tricky. And I may be speaking out of turn and I could well be wrong because when I look
back, you know, there were always stories of, you know, people who were like, oh, I'm going to be
a climber. And I think there were stories when we were growing up in the scene, you know, in the
early days of climbers that were dressed, you know, one of the guys would campus until he fainted
and he had fainted from low blood sugar. And then when he, when he came back around,
he'd start campusing again.
Okay.
You know, that's got to be bad for you.
Yeah.
I remember sitting in a hostel with Russian athletes back in 2013 and they were having,
like they were cut a piece of hard boiled egg, like, you know, the width of two 50 cent pieces,
put it between two rice wafers and that was their breakfast.
And you're like, that's not, and there were a lot of very unhealthy practices. I remember
being contacted by one really upset climber because they were on a youth training camp
and they were being made to weigh in in front of everyone every morning after breakfast,
which is kind of like the old gymnastics philosophy that, you know, you want people
to be light. So you make them do a public weigh in so that they're shamed by their peers.
Or another athlete I knew, she contacted me and she was very upset and she's a World Cup medalist
and very good athlete. And her coaches said, you need to get under 50 kilos.
And she said, well, at the size I am 50 kilos, you know, I'm 52 kilos. I'm already as light as
I'm comfortable being. And they said, no, you have to be under 50 kilos. And she said, well,
I can't get under 50 kilos. And they said, well, if you can't, there's lots of other girls that can.
And then they went to her parents and said to her parents, she's not putting in the effort.
She's not willing to make the sacrifices needed to be a top climber. And so her parents basically
turned against her and went, we've spent all this time and money helping you be a really good climber.
Why are you slacking off now? And she wasn't slacking off. She was just trying to be healthy.
And it was the Federation coaches that were pushing that. And I raised that back in the day
with the IFSC and goodness knows of much came of it. But, you know, she's still climbing and competing
now. So I like to think that she's doing all right. But it's like, a lot of them had contact me when
they had issues because I was close to the athletes, but I'm a safe person because after a bad comp,
or a bad round, or your head's in just the wrong space, you don't want to go to your coach because
your coaches spend all this time working on you. You kind of don't want to say, hey, because you
feel like you're failing them. And the same with the parents. So they kind of wanted like a neutral
party to, you know, who could empathize with them, but wouldn't judge them. And so that sort of became
as an older person, I was sort of like the sounding board for a lot of them. Yeah, I was the person
that a lot of them came to. And there was a few that were bad and I had to go, okay, I actually
have to escalate this to people in the IFSC because what you're talking to me is abuse.
Yeah. I guess that's kind of why I think that why I thought that it would be better nowadays than
in the past because we've like learned from experiences or learned from people who've spoken
out about it or things like that. I like to think so, but obviously I was in Slovenia last year as a
coach, I took over a couple of girls that I was coaching to compete and some of them still look
like they're on the wrong side of the battle at the moment. And so I think that's why I thought
and it's always tricky. I know, for instance, one of the very good climbing
females used to say, look, I lose weight for every season to compete, but I make sure I put the weight
back on in the off season so that I'm not so unhealthy. And I don't know that that was a
sustainable method or effect that ended up doing long-term harm to her. She's retired now. So
I can't say, but like kind of like boxes, trying to get down to a fighting weight.
Yeah. But at what point does cutting get dangerous? At what point are you harming yourself? And
climbing definitely had a pretty poor culture around that back in the day. And I think,
I guess just maybe because it's been in the media so much lately and I hear about it and I
look at some of the photos and I'm like, I still, I used to refuse to sell photos of climbers that
had obvious health issues and eating disorders. I remember at one stage, Natalie Berry contacted
me and said they wanted to run a profile on a climber. I said, look, I'm not comfortable
sending you photos of them because even though I might make 500 or a thousand euros, that's a bad
precedent to be setting to make that an acceptable body type. And you might go, well, who are you to
judge? And I'm like, well, I'm someone of eyes. Sure. And because you know these kids, especially
if you know them from when they're juniors, if they turn up one year and they look amassed,
did you like hold it? Something's gone wrong. Sure. Yeah. You know, there was a couple of
cases of that happened where the climbers had taken on upon themselves. And I even had coaches
come to me and say, can you talk to my climber? Cause they're too skinny and they won't listen to
me. And I think they're unhealthy. And you go to the athlete and you say, look, we're worried
about you. You look terrible. I'm fine. And you're like, no, you're not. So, and the thing is as
well, people tend to gender red S a lot. Um, because obviously a lot of, uh, studies and stuff
have been around, uh, long-term health and females, but it's also very applicable in the males. Um,
some of the guys were dreadfully skinny. And I think that in the guys, at least the healthy
physiques tend to outweigh the unhealthy physiques now, but there was definitely, you know,
back in the days of Rooster and Demetri and that they were just gaunt, incredibly gaunt.
You know, when, when you're 46 or 50 kilos is like a five foot nine guy. Yeah. Yeah. And
you're athletic. You're like, okay, something, you know, you're, you're that's as much as one
of my legs. Please excuse this brief intermission, but I would just like to remind you that if you
are enjoying this podcast, please follow and rate it on your preferred listening platform.
If you're watching on YouTube, I would love to hear your discussion and thoughts in the comments
below. Anything helps to push this podcast out to more people and get even more amazing guests on
back to the show. So that reminds me a bit of one, uh, like in the discord when I was getting some
questions that we could get into a bit later, um, kind of started discussion about, uh, photo
journalism, um, objectivity of the climbers and getting engagement. Um, like when you said that
you wouldn't sell certain photos of certain climbers because you didn't feel comfortable
doing that. I guess they said that photographers or photographers are sometimes making a living from
exploiting climbers in a way. Um, so for example, like, do you photograph athletes in vulnerable
moments? Like when they find out they didn't podium or when they get injured or something like that?
Uh, yeah, absolutely. But I then have to make a judgment call on whether those photos should
ever be published. So how do you, I guess, take the, if you don't take the photo, then it disappears
as part of a narrative forever. If you take the photo, then later on someone might come back and
say, Hey, you know, I was going through a really rough period. Now I want to do a, um, a thing
about my redemption arc, my getting back to the top. Um, did you get any photos of that? And
actually, yeah, I did. I just chose not to share them. Um, it's, a lot of it comes down to knowing
the athletes and what they're comfortable with. I've had some clangers, I've put, put up some photos
thinking a photo was harmless and just like a fun angle or something. And then the climbers
copped abuse just from the public. Cause they've gone, Oh, look at the size of their ass. Oh,
I thought climbers are supposed to be skinny. Oh, the sudden the other. And I'm like, Oh my God,
that's not what, you know, I had this photo many years ago now of, um, Chloe, Chloe Coolia from
Belgium. And she was just in this crazy position in Vail. And I posted it cause when I looked at
the photo and I looked at her face and I looked at her body position, I'm like, that's cool. But
when I posted it, a lot of people went to town on it and they didn't go to town on me for taking
the photo. It went to town on her for her physique in that angle wasn't flattering. And I'm like,
guys, no one's flattering in every angle all the time. Um, but it did make me very conscious. And
one time, um, I actually pulled a photo down that I posted cause I took a photo in, um,
Wujiang in, I'm going to say 2019 when everyone was doing speed because they were all trying to
get them to combine for the Olympics. And there's a couple of the guys and they're assembling,
like they were, they were miming the route to each other and they're doing that. And I
took this photo and I put it up and then, um, the Austrian coach messaged me and said, Hey, can you
take that down? And I'm like, why? And it's like, it looks like they're doing the hit list to lose
and that's not appropriate. And I looked at it and I went, Oh, okay. Yeah. I like, I wouldn't see that,
but I could see how someone would see that. And so I took it down. You know, um, so there are,
uh, there are times you take photos that are inadvertently upsetting and there are times you
take photos that are upsetting, but you know that it's going to, you take a photo of a climber being
carried off of a stuff knee. You're not going to post that photo, but you know that that photo
might have an intrinsic value later on. Um, the question is, do you post it or not? And that comes
down to your individual ethics and your individual, you know, I've got photos of
Yanya having a cry after not doing well on a comp and I've not posted them, but took the photo,
you know, um, cause she's a human, she cries. That's not demeaning to her. That's just
how important winning is that, you know, all these athletes have standards and when they fail to
meet their own perceived standards, they, they are emotional and that is part of the three
dimensionality of the sport. Um, I don't know if you watch back coverage yet of, um, Salt Lake, but,
Alex was talking in commentary and I thought it was very relevant about sort of the false smiles
that some of the girls put on now. They, they have like the, the gymnast dash dancer smile where they
just walk around with like a Richter's grin the whole time and it just looks terrible, but they're
just like, okay. And it's that in itself as a defense mechanism that
taught to do it. And it's like, look at me, I'm having fun. And you're looking at the guy,
that's the most unnatural smile I've ever seen. The thing is some people don't want to show, you
know, take, and I'm not saying she's a fake smiler, but I'm going to take a smiler versus a
non-smiler, take Natalia, who's a smiler and Stacia, who's a non-smiler. And I'm going to
and Stacia, who's a non-smiler and, um, I knew those would be your two examples. Yeah. Or Jan
Hyler, Jan Hoyer, who's a non-smiler, um, versus maybe Enrico, who's more of a smiler, but not like
a huge, but you know what I'm saying? Like people show different levels of emotion and some people
wear their hat on the sleeve and other people close that off and defend it. Um,
that's a very, that's part of the front they present. Um, and you know, I can't remember how
we got to smiles off photos people are uncomfortable with, but that's, it's part of the facade. And
at the end of the day, this may sound a bit brutal, but it's almost part of the athletic
contract that when you are having photos taken of you as a professional athlete, not every photo is
going to be flattering. Um, but every photo should tell a story. If a photo is not flattering and
it doesn't tell a story, well, there's no value in this photo, but if a photo is not flattering,
but it tells a story, you know, the photo I took of, or a series of photos I took of Ola Muraslow,
when she qualified for Olympics in Hachioji and she's blubbing like a baby, not the nicest set of
photos of her, but conveys pure emotion. Cause she's unbelievably happy. Now, should I not put
those photos, should I not put those photos up because it doesn't show her happy and smiling
because she, she is very happy, but she's blubbing. So she doesn't, you know, it's not the,
the most attractive look, but like, but you look at it and you go, okay, that's raw emotion. That's,
you know, the photo journalism is journalism. It's not just a photo and photo journalism has
to be a free 60 degree thing. And that means the good as well as the bad, as well as the ugly,
as well as the pretty, you know, if I was a media whore, that's not a good thing.
If I was a media whore that just wanted hundreds of thousands of photos or hundreds of thousands
of followers, sorry, on Instagram or something, I'd just post photos of female climbers and I'd
just post photos of attractive female climbers. But that again is disrespectful and creepy and a bit
Yeah, that's so gross to think about.
You know, when I, you know, I had fairly strong social media following and it's fallen away now,
of course, cause I haven't been as active, but I would know if I posted a photo of a pretty girl,
I get twice as many likes as if I posted a photo of Yakub Schubert.
Even if a pretty girl was just midfield somewhere
because people just are based.
Interesting.
So for me, you know, I had have a pretty strong standard and how I've always done my social media,
which was where possible and it wasn't always possible. So, but I tried to keep a overall
balance would be male photo, female photo and blend of ethnicity photo.
So I would not do a dozen posts of females in a row, a dozen posts of males in a row,
a dozen posts of white guys in a row, a dozen posts of age. It would, you know, I tried to
constantly blend the subject matter of the photos by ethnicity, by nationality, by gender,
so that I wasn't falling into a trap, but that has to be a conscious choice and it has to be
deliberated, you know, but that's part of a responsibility of being a professional,
as you need to carry yourself in a professional manner. And sometimes I haven't and I've been
caught out for it and it's embarrassing. And I don't think I've ever maliciously been
unprofessional, but there are times, like I mentioned with that Nazi salute one, that I was
just accidentally non-professional. As a photographer, you get a chance to kind of
like think about it before you post. I remember one instance, I think last year in copper,
Mia Crampel like fell early. It was really devastating and the camera kept like cutting to
her crying, like sitting in the athlete area after. And I think I remember people were like
pretty upset about it in the comments. Yeah, I was at that comp. I remember it. I don't remember
if it was copper was the one she fell, or whether I watched that just when I was watching it back.
I honestly can't remember because I tend to tend to watch the rounds afterwards, even if I'm at
the round, just because you actually miss a lot when you're taking photos. People always come up
and say, who won? And I've got no idea. Oh yeah, I've heard that. It's important to show
the range of emotion, but it's important not to linger. I think you can show that she's upset,
but by the third time you're showing she's upset, you're being a dick about it.
You know, it's human nature to be upset. If you want to show
an athlete, male or female, having a blob after they haven't met their goals, that's not
disrespectful for them because it just shows how important it is to them to do well. But if you
keep going back to it, then it becomes a bit voyeuristic. Okay. That's a good word to use,
I guess. It's always a dark side of the sport is you have one winner and a whole lot of
losers. But what you need to remember is that winning is not everyone's goal. For a lot of
them, their goal might just be top 10, top 20, top 50, because it's a stairway to get to the top.
But in a pure unadulterated format in sport, more people are always going to lose than they're
going to win. There's no participation award. It's about seeing if you're the best, you can be the
best in the world. And some people just aren't. But they should be able to take some, if not a
lot of satisfaction from being in the top tiniest, tiniest percent of people in the world. Because
to even get to a World Cup, you get to a World Cup and you come last and you're so embarrassed
and that's so bad and you got to a World Cup. How many people ever get to a World Cup in any sport?
How many people are good enough that they can go, okay, I am going out on the mats against
Tomoa Narasaki? And we sometimes have a narrative that someone's a loser because they're a
regular finalist, but not a winner. And it's like, well, hold it. You look at someone like Oceana
McKenzie, regular finalist now, and came from a country without a strong climbing culture, without
a strong climbing history. She's had to forge her own path. She's had to make sacrifices and her
family's had to make sacrifices far beyond what 99% of people would even be willing to make.
To me at every level, that's a winner. But some people will go, well, she never won a World Cup.
She'll just go down as an also around that area. And it's like, she's not. She's not a winner.
She's not. She's the best competition climber Oceana has ever had. Someone like Campbell Harrison,
he's been plugging for years. And sorry, I'm focusing on the Australians now, but
geographically they're close to me. And I've had Campbell on the podcast.
Yeah. And he's nicest dude ever. And I've known him since he was about 15. And he's in that
category, how I described, some people had the talent, some people had the bloody mindedness.
No one I've ever met has been more bloody minded than Campbell. He wants to be the best Campbell
can be. And will he ever win a World Cup? Probably not. Will he retire one day and look back and go,
my goodness, look at what I achieved. Look at how far I pushed the sport in my part of the world.
Look at what I did for the sport among his demographic, incredible accomplishment.
So an example of Campbell is I remember Campbell as maybe a 17 year old.
And we were in Imps and he had a bad World Cup and he came off and he just threw his shoes.
Like, and I pulled him up and I told him off and I said, dude, I know you're upset, but
it's not a good look. And he was pretty frustrated at me. And he was pretty frustrated about the
whole thing. I said, look, at the end of the day, it takes a certain amount of toughness and maturity
to be an athlete. And we all have bad days, but you know, that's kind of disrespectful and distracting
to everyone else around if you start performing like that. And he took that on board and it didn't
do it again. And that's the, you know, he was very upset with himself because he was climbing very
well and he made a silly mistake. And then, you know, and that's the thing with athletes is
they are emotionally highly strung because they've committed so much. You know, you think of
how scary like a major exam is. And every time they do a World Cup, it's like a major exam in public
with thousands of people. They don't know watching them. Like that's confronting. You know, in
2017 at World Games, Stacia Gaiot came up to me after qualifiers and she qualified sixth in the
finals. So last in the finals. And she was in tears and she wanted to quit and she didn't want to do
this again and yada, yada, yada. And I was like, look, you're really good. It's one more round.
You've made it to the next round. Give it your all and see how you feel afterwards. And she ended up
winning. So, you know, it's like, sometimes you
as a human, as an athlete, as a young person, you need to release all this pent up tension and
anger and angst. But then when you come back and focus again afterwards, you're, you're lethal
because you're absolutely tuned in. You, everything is right at the top of the fight or flight thing.
And everything means a lot and you climb your backside off. So, you know, people
forget that when they talk about climbers like, uh, Janya or Natalia or, um, people like that, that
they're climbers they've only ever given the opportunity to lose because they're so good at
winning. The only way is down. And then you're like, oh, I'm going to win. And then you're like,
oh, I'm going to win. And you're like, oh, I'm going to win. And the only way is down.
They can maintain the status quo or drop. And that's a brutal place for an athlete to be. That's
almost worse than not being a winner. Geez. Yeah. You know, I remember years ago, I interviewed
Killian Fishuber, um, you know, one of the absolute legends of competition bouldering,
and the hardest thing to win after that is your second World Cup.
He said, you know, until you've won a World Cup, you're one of the many that have never won a World
Cup. And then you win a World Cup, and you become one of the many that's only won one World Cup.
And once you won a couple of World Cups, it kind of gets a little bit easier, not easier, but like,
it's a little bit easier to take less pressure. But it flips when you suddenly, you're someone who's won
10 World Cups or 20 World Cups, or in Yanyi's case, more than 40 World Cups.
Every time you go out there, you're putting yourself in a position of vulnerability.
You know, Yanyi could retire tomorrow, and I'd give her the biggest hug and say, congratulations
on a fantastic career. And I completely understand why she's retiring, even though she could have
another decade at the top of the sport. When Yula Worm retired, she won the World Championships in
2014, and then retired. And I'm like, you're 24, why are you retiring? And she's like,
I've been on the road for eight years. I haven't had normal life for eight years. What more can
I achieve from being a world champion? And I was like, yeah, fair. You know?
And I guess it's like, you don't want to watch your own downfall, I guess, as you eventually
start to age and stuff like that. You don't want to be the has-been.
Some people do because it's all they know. And they just, it's their people,
it's their environment, and they're almost at peace with themselves and that decline. But
you know, it's not a sport that most people will be doing when they're 40. It's not a sport that
most people will be doing when they're 30. And then the females, it's not a sport what
most people will be doing when they're in their late 20s. You know, I remember
Kyra and Jessie and all Vatten Juniors when they were 18, 19. And now they are kind of in the
twilight of their careers. They might have another three or four seasons, but they are, you know,
I guess, yeah, between six, 27. You know, at what point do you go, well, actually,
I want a family, I want a life, I want normalcy. But speaking on those terms, like
Campbell, you were talking about earlier, he's also getting older. He's been in the scene for
a long time, but this is also kind of like the best season he's had. And he's been in the
the best season he's had so far. Oh, absolutely. Because it's not just purely age related.
You do definitely see older climbers still rising to the top. But there is a, you know,
as I said with Campbell, he's so bloody minded, which is a huge, and I mean that as a compliment,
it's a it's a very important attribute for an athlete to have is to be willing to sacrifice.
You know, Campbell's in a relationship, he leaves his partner at home, he goes and does what he does.
That's got a way on him. But maybe that's a positive weighing on him, because by knowing
how important that is, it gives him some and knowing that he's got something to come home to,
it's put him in a better place. It's a person to person thing. You know, you look at some of the
older campaigners like Sean McCall or Jakob Schubert or even Adam now, and you know, their time will pass.
Great thing about climbing is you can pass for competitions and still go and have a fantastic
life in the sport. Look at Shawna. You know, she closed the chapter on competitions, but she's gone
on to be Shawna. So yeah, it's, you know, if you're a football player, once you stop playing
football, you stop playing football. Right. Yeah, I guess so. If you're a
boxer, once you stop boxing, you stop boxing. If you're a climber, once you stop competing,
you've got the whole world of outdoor boulders and roots. I'm sorry, I'm a boulder at heart.
Or you become like a ninja warrior. If you want to make some money.
So yeah, or you use your platform in another way. You know, a lot of people
now in the age of social media and stuff, they like to use their platform more to
talk about social issues or empowerment or whatever it may be. Now, are they qualified to do so?
Arguably not. Are they within their rights to do so? Absolutely.
And, you know, so you get that sort of being an influencer can come after you retire.
You know, there's all sorts of things that you can do. And
yeah, hanging up your chalk bag for the last time in competition is very different to hanging up
your chalk bag for the last time in real life. And, you know, we're lucky that we're in a
lifelong sport where, you know, yeah, some people will probably hang up and maybe never climb again,
but the vast majority won't. I kind of wanted to get into areas of improvement that you see for the
IFSC, since I think you have some pretty strong opinions about that as well. See, I know people
will be sick of me saying this now and I sound like a broken record, but, you know, last couple
years because so I had a pretty major knee injury. I said earlier in the episode about how that stopped
me climbing at my limit. When I got back to New Zealand, it had become unstable. So I finally had
the operation required in putting my knee back to how it should be, but it'll never be the same now
because so much damage happened over the years that I was on the road, but it wasn't being done.
And so I myself, I haven't actually climbed in three years because I'm too scared to fall now.
So maybe that door has shut forever for me. I don't know, but, you know, there's days I desperately
want to go to the gym and then I think, I don't know if I'm brave enough to. And so I've taken up
disc golf as a sport because disc golf is kind of a great retired climber sport because
it's physical problem solving to achieve an objective, which is effectively climbing.
You know, you've not nearly as physical, so it's good for the decrepit broken people like me.
But it's still, you know, what disc do you use? How do you shape the shops? How do you get to
where you need to be? But the thing that's astounded me is disc golf, I would say is a
very similar size sport to climbing. So there's a professional tour, there's a professional body,
there's approximately 20 disc golfers, 20 million disc golfers, they said worldwide.
There's approximately 20 million gym users worldwide, according to most of the statistics
we see from the IFSC in that. And so disc golf has its pro tour. And, you know, they had champions
cup a couple of weeks ago and first place is nine and a half thousand dollars. And so it's a
$1,500 and they pay down to 40th. And you get what two and a half for winning a World Cup and
they pay down to eighth. Like, you can't actually survive being a competition climber, even if you
won every World Cup you went to. And that's not a sustainable way for a sport to exist. And I think
that they need to, for starters, I think they need to have prize money down to everyone who
makes semis should get prize money. If you're televised, you should be paid. I also think
semis should be 20 for LEAD as well as Boulder because I think 26 is a bit of a hangover to the
old days. Yeah. Do you know why it's 26? Seems kind of random. Like a division to eight. Not even. I
don't know. No, I've got no idea. No, I was spitballing, but nothing. But I think it'd speed up
the event, make it run smoother if it was just 20 in each. And I think if you're televised, you
should be getting money. And so there's a couple of big changes I would do, which would forever
change the IFSC. The first thing I would do is I'd stop competing for countries. I'd get rid of
national federations. I would compete for sponsors. And your body is the real estate that you can put
sponsors advertising on. So if you're a North Face Scarpa athlete and you're climbing Logut up in
North Face Scarpa, North Face and Scarpa are going to pay you better. Because at the moment,
they get these tiny little sponsor things that they can put on. But you might be an Adidas sponsored
athlete climbing for a country which has a North Face outfit. And there's all these limiting
factors. And why does the sponsor want to pay real money for a two inch by one inch patch on the back
of your shorts that you harness as covering half the time anyway? Is that like something that Disc
Golf does? It's like individual sponsored? Yeah, you're individually sponsored and you compete on
and tennis and many other sports. You might be from such and such country, but you're wearing
what you want and competing for yourself. And you get into events on your rating and your ranking,
not on a national pick. And if that means that there's 20 Japanese guys that are good enough
to be in the World Cup, well, if they've got sponsorship, then there's 20 Japanese guys in
the World Cup. That's fine. You know, it's almost embarrassing that we cull some of the top athletes
because there's so many good athletes from that country and then let in much lower athletes from
another country just to make quotas. So that would be the first thing I would do. And then the second
thing I would do would be I would massively raise entry fees. But the entry fees would go back into
the prize pool. If people want to compete, they're spending so much to go to these competitions
anyway. If you make entry to a World Cup $500 and you've got 120 guys competing, but the top 40 say
get paid and everyone's putting $500 in, you know, suddenly you've got a $70,000, $60,000 prize pool
that you can then go, okay, your winner gets $15,000, your second place gets $9,000, your third
gets $6,000. And you make sure that even the last cash gets more than the entry fee.
And I think that would just revolutionize the sport because it would make it,
one, it would make getting to the cash line more important. You know, if you get to the cash line,
you're going to get real money. You know, what's eighth place in a World Cup, 90 euro or something,
who cares? Yeah. Okay, great. So you flow in from
Great Britain to China. And it's cost you 2000 euros in flights, and 1000 euros in hotels,
and 500 euros in food. And you come eighth and they go, here's 90 euro. Where's the math in that?
Where's the logic? And I think if you get rid of the federations, now a lot of federations pay
their athletes, but a lot of federations don't pay their athletes. You get rid of the federations,
and instead you turn around to the climbing hold manufacturers, the gyms, the people with money.
And you say, look, we're a professional sport, it's about time you started putting in.
If you're touchstone climbing, and you've got 10 gyms through the country, you can afford to sponsor
half a dozen climbers. If you're boulder belt, or studio block, or climbing works, you can afford
to sponsor a climber or two. You know, they're effectively just an employee. You're just paying
them to compete for you rather than, because they're representing your brand, and an advertisement
for your brand. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So that would be the biggest change I'd put in place,
would be, I would take away federations, open up advertising, increase entry fees,
but increase prize money accordingly. So if you have a look at the first world to first
English, remember how to speak English. If you look at the first two World Cups this year,
okay, you had China, and you had the US, and you had half the climbers made the effort to go to China,
and the other half made the effort to go to the US. What does that mean? That means that
the World Cups have lost their mana, they've lost their value, they've lost their importance,
because it's not an economic, there's no economic incentive to make the effort to go.
Well, also the Olympics. Also the Olympics, but, well, that's another thing that we can crack on to,
but if it's 10,000 euros to win, and 6,000 for second, and 5,000 for third, or whatever,
are you going to go to the US? And if you then guarantee that you got all the athletes,
are you going to sell more tickets? And are you going to get better venues? You know, it's,
to me, climbing has a poverty mentality, everyone loves to tell you how bad they're doing.
If there's 20 million gym users around the world, and say 10 million of them own their own climbing
shoes, and say 5 million of them are buying more than one pair a year, that's a lot of money goes
into climbing shoes. So, okay, the climbing shoe companies can afford to sponsor some climbers.
Okay, if there's 20 million gym users a year, that's a lot of people paying membership, so
gyms can afford to sponsor some people, the hold companies can afford to sponsor some people. And,
you know, and then there's outside sponsors, who are really bad at external sponsors in climbing.
You look at all these sports, and they have all these wonderful corporate sponsors.
Who are the IFSC sponsors currently? I have no idea really.
For a couple years, they had Japan Airlines, but they don't appear to be here this year.
I haven't seen them here, they had Toyo tires, they don't appear to be here this year.
So there's all these things that we're not retaining sponsors, and if we're not retaining sponsors,
there's a problem. And if there's a problem, we need to work out what that problem is and fix it.
And, you know, I think that we need to look at a way of making
professional competition climbing a viable pathway for the athletes, so that they want to
professionally competition climb. And we need to give back the World Cup and the World Championships,
they're important, that the athletes are going to want to go to them. Because, you know, so I was
working on a book, and for mental health reasons, I shelved it, because it was very emotionally
draining. And the book was just a photo book of five years leading to the first Olympics.
And I was going to call it on the circuit, and then I actually changed the name to Before the Fall,
because I feel that competition climbing is falling. I feel that with the exception of Olympics,
World Cups and World Champs have lost their prestige. People are, you know, being the World
Champion used to be the most important thing, being the World Cup Champion used to be the second most
important thing, winning a World Cup used to be the third most important thing. Now, obviously,
winning the Olympics is the most important thing. And the other things have slid into a degree that
people won't even attend. Well, I guess I kind of want to see what happens next year after the
Olympics happens to see if it kind of gets that back, since it won't be an Olympic year.
Because we've we had a messed up Olympic schedule because of the delayed Tokyo Olympics. So we've
never had a proper cycle. So that is one thing that we have to look at. But I mean, I'll tell
you right now, if the prize money is not there, a lot of these athletes that have put so much into
going to the Olympics will probably take a year off. And I think that's the reason why we're
saying that. We'll probably take a year off, or at least a bunch of comps off. And then you left with
the same issue. You know, if you turn around to Yanya and said, Yanya, you've had a great season,
you've won five World Cups, you've made 10,000 euros. You turn around to her and said, Yanya,
next year, if you win that number of World Cups, you're going to have 70,000 euros.
That is a pretty big difference, actually.
So and we keep cannibalizing and internalizing our resources. You know, obviously, we need to
pay route setters, we need to pay venue hire, we need to pay all these things. I appreciate that.
Do we need to send the IFSC on holiday every year to a different part of the world for their
plenary assembly? Because, you know, they just were in Chile a couple of months ago. Last year,
they were in whatever part of the world. The year before that, they were in, was it the US?
I can't remember. And they fly their whole staff across, you know, 12, 13 people jump on a plane,
probably not all in economy. They bring in, you know, the members of the board from Japan
and the US or whatever, probably not an economy. They fly to these places, they probably don't stay
in a UFOstle. And they have a meeting, have they not heard of zoom? You know, we've got climbers
struggling to make ends meet. And they're probably spending 50,000 euros or more on a meeting.
You know, to me, that's fundamentally broken in the sport. To me, if we injected that 50,000
euro back into the sport, maybe we hire someone effective at sponsorship acquisition so that we
can get some recent sponsors. So for me, that's a huge thing. And the other thing,
and I know there's a lot of good people at the IFSC. I've worked with several, but
the IFSC has over the last several years picked up a lot of, quote unquote, middle management from
other sports, who I would say are not invested in climbing, they're just sports administrators.
But I would question whether they have our best interests at heart, or whether we're just a step
on the career progression for them. And I think that there's been some pretty poor
pretty poor acquisition or choices. Because they go look at such and such, he's really big in the
shooting world of a sailing world, or he ran an event once in boxing. And I was like, okay,
that's great. But do they understand our culture? But do they understand our ethos? And, you know,
there's nothing cheesier than reading the IFSC staff profiles, which are such and such is blah,
blah, blah. But now he's going to give climbing a try. It's like, you know, to me,
I feel like we've probably got many resources in climbing who were overlooking.
And we should be going back to our roots a bit and choosing people within the sport.
You know, there are some incredibly wealthy people who climb, and who represent major companies.
And are we engaging them to talk about sponsorship or talk to what they can give back to the sport?
Not that I know of. You know, we literally in Vale have people flying in on private jets to watch
the GoPro games. You know, we have people worth literal billions of dollars. We have Jared Leto
in the front row. And wait, what? Yes, I can send you photos. The actor dude, he's a get.
Wait, does he climb? Yeah. Oh, I had no idea. Yeah. You know, we'd love to see those photos.
Yeah, you got Jason Momoa is a big climbing fan. I'm sure he's got contacts. Why aren't we
utilizing these contacts to get the brands who can provide some sponsorship, the sponsorships
then pay for the events. And then the event organizers can hunt money for prizes. And then
the event organizers can hunt money for prize giving. Hunt money for, you know, because if you
get if you raise the money for athletes, but in disc golf, and yes, I know disc golf, they
do what's called added cash, which is the event has to give money to prize money on top of the
entry fees. So if they if the event gets $50,000 in entry fees, the event then has to put in
$50,000 of its own towards prize money. So, you know, I think I always described the IFC I had
like an analogy. It's a little bit outdated now because everyone shops online, sorry. But I always
said, you know, it's like, can you imagine walking into a mobile phone shop? Really nice mobile
phone shop, you've got all the different brands, you got all the different models over different
handsets. And the IFC own the phone shop. And you walk in and the athletes are the phones. And every
phone is unique. And every phone does something different. And every phone has different strengths
and weaknesses. And you say to the IFC, Hey, I want a phone. And they go, Look at our pretty shop.
Isn't our shop pretty? Look at our new walls. Look at this. Look at that. And you're like,
Yeah, but what about the phones? Well, we got a really good new computer system here. Look at
this. Yeah, but what about the phones? You know, the athletes who are the phones are not the
priority is everything else is the priority. And the IFC has to be athlete first. So yeah, for me,
it's so incredibly important that we are an athlete focused sport. And I do feel that that
is not what we appear to be because we're not looking after the athletes. We're not giving them
a viable financially viable option to exist in the world. We're not letting them be professionals.
We're not letting them make a living. We're relying on them scrounging, doing GoFundMe pages,
leeching off their parents, because it's not a sustainable model. That's not, you know, I,
I would love to see the whole IFC board gone and half the staff gone, purely because I think that
we need new blood. I think that they did a really great job establishing the sport. But I think
that we're now at a place in our progression where we actually need people coming in who afford
thinking and have the right focus on the future. And I don't think that the board, as it stands,
can stand there and say, well, look at what we've done over the last however many years
to do this. All they've done over the last however many years is basically Olympics and
everything else is secondary. There's been train wrecks every year, whether it be R-Skate,
or the Alana Farber, whether it be Red S, whether it be whatever, you know, climbing's great at
making it into the news for all the wrong reasons. I think some people won't know that reference.
Those that do do, those that don't don't. But climbing's great for making it into the news
for all the wrong reasons. Well, maybe we need to change those bloody reasons.
Yeah, it sounds like sponsors is probably one of the biggest things. I guess I'm not as sure about
having athletes pay more for entrance. Because like, obviously, a lot of them are already
struggling. And I think the IFSC also tries to do stuff with like, universality and like trying to
get athletes from smaller countries who maybe don't have as much opportunity to compete at a
high level. And that might kind of make it difficult for those athletes to get a chance
and that experience. I mean, I hear that. But I think if you've got the money coming into the
sport, then you have more opportunities to then take some of that money into development programs.
I think, you know, from the start, I think that there's just not enough money coming into the
sport. For the size of the sport, for the viewership, for the global reach of the sport,
I think that we're not achieving our goals financially. And so yeah, I'd like to see
yeah, maybe the raised entry fee isn't the right way, but I'd like to see in some way.
And this is why people much more intelligent than myself are employed into these positions to
come up with solutions. Well, I mean, I think those are kind of the best solutions I've heard
so far. So most people, yeah, I think
everyone knows that there should be more money coming into comp climbing, but no one really knows
a way of how to do it. So yeah, I think sponsors. Yeah. And at an athlete level, sponsoring an
athlete for a year, if you're a gym is the equivalent of an employee. And, you know, that's
because then if I also have a shoe sponsor, if I also have a shoe sponsor, I can't do it.
You know, that's because then if I also have a shoe sponsor, if I also have some apparel sponsors,
guess what? Between the three, they're covered. You know, I know,
I know, like multiple World Cup winners who were getting offered like $3,000 shoe deals.
And that's just a joke. You know, I know, one of the very good climbers who was sponsored by a
pretty major shoe company and they're getting $26,000 a year. And that's still not even a wage.
And if you are spending $20,000 a year on travel, that's leaving you $6,000 a year to live.
So you're grafting, you're having to coach, to rely on your parents, to
rely on your partner, whatever it may be. You know, how many professional climbers are actually
living comfortably? And that's, if the answer is, I would say if the answer is more than 20%
I would say if the answer is more than 20% out of climbing, I would be surprised.
And I'd say if the answer is less than 80%, it's unacceptable.
Because the answer should be 80%, but I think we're less than 20%.
So to me, there's a big disconnect that has to be addressed. And
yeah, as I said, I do feel that the current board has done a lot of work, but
how long do their 10 years need to be before you go, let's bring in someone refreshed by,
I'd like to see some guys from IFSC Europe, for instance, step up.
Because I feel like they're more energetic, younger, forward thinking.
You know, it was obviously a huge, it's a tragedy, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which is
a terrible, terrible thing. And because of that, I had to make a hard choice
not to publicize Russian climbing or anything to do with Russian climbing on my social media.
And one of the things at a personal level that
is inconsequential compared to the actual depth and breadth of the conflict, but to me was I
always wanted Dmitry Bishkov, president of Russia climbing to be the next head of the IFSC.
Because if you look at what he's done for climbers in Russia,
so, so much, you know, he was a younger guy with vision who grew the sport from the doldrums in
Russia into a major sport. And now obviously, that can't be now, but he's a young guy,
and now obviously that can't be now because of global politics. But, you know, Heiko Wilhelm
is another one who I think could step into a role like that and really excel. His name slips me
right now, but the ex head of Austria climbing before Heiko, Michael, Michael Schimpf, like,
I would love to see someone like him given the reins of the IFSC and told to run with it.
Because I think they would revolutionize it. You know, I don't have a lot of time or respect for
many people in the board or in the workings of the IFSC because I think that they're squandering
opportunities. And I think that they're doing more damage control than development.
So I guess that kind of transitions into one of the discord questions. I guess we can kind of move
into that. Just like the last couple of questions, since we're running on time. One of the questions
that came in was, do you think it's possible that there could or should be an alternative to the IFSC?
And is that something that's viable or would like maybe be better?
So 100%. And something that had been discussed at an informal level prior to COVID.
Some of us had said it would be great if you had
unofficial or less official or whatever you care to call it alternative series
that was based around StudioBlock, Kwiff, DocMasters, and so on.
DocMasters, North Face Cup in Japan, Dark Horse, for instance, in the US, where you amalgamated
a bunch of existing independent comps and said you can run the comps as you run them,
but we want to make it part of a global series and make it attractive for international athletes to
attend because not only are they attending these comps as out of season training, but they're
attending these comps as something which has a cumulative outcome for them.
I think the other thing that I'd love to see us get back to, and sorry, I know this is a slight
tangent, is I'd love to see the seasons separated properly again. I'd love to see a bolder season
and a lead season. And speed can go wherever, but I'd probably put speed in the middle. It'd be
bolder speed lead through the year, and then you could have independent comps outside of that
season, but that way the athletes can train and peak specifically for the events in those
disciplines and there's no overlap. Now I know obviously with the Olympics, and I'm not the fan
of Olympics list, let me make that very clear. I think Olympics is one of the worst things that's
ever happened to the sport, but I think that that has broken the individual disciplines because of
the combined aspect, which is my problem with the Olympics. Well, I mean they're working towards it
at least. I know they're working towards it, but from a personal level I would have preferred us
not to be in the Olympics until we could provide the product we wanted to the Olympics, rather than
us create a mongrelized product that really didn't represent the sport at its peak. It was a bit
embarrassing watching the lead climbers and speed in Tokyo and the speed climbers in Boulder at Tokyo
sort of thing. Oh, but I love seeing that. See, I didn't. I wanted to see the best speed. I would
have been much happier if Olympics had just been speed initially, to see the best in the world at
a discipline representing themselves as the best at the world. Asking climbers to be something
they're not, asking boulders to lead climb and vice versa, I still don't think is a
clean solution.
I hate the fact that they changed combined as much as I don't like combined, because for the sake of
continuity, whoever wins this Olympics is won a different format to the last Olympics. So what
happens to LA? Do we then have a fair, you know, if we get all three disciplines is it then a
different, the whole thing, I think we were too busy desperately trying to fit in, rather than
standing our ground and saying this is our value as a sport. And this is what we represent. Yeah,
I guess I'm not sure their perspective or what happened behind the scenes. But I guess I was
assuming it was either you only get one medal or just like, don't even bother like it's not gonna
happen. And as I said, personally, I would have preferred that to have been speed. Well, I think
because it's the easiest idea to believe in those things, but I think it's the best way to
think about it. Because it's the easiest idea to believe in those disciplines. And I'm not actually
a huge fan of modern speed. I would have preferred that to just showcase the best speed climbers in
the world, rather than showcase a bunch, you know, it'd be like, it'd be like taking a bunch of the
best track and field athletes in the world and making them do decathlon, but they're not decathletes.
Yeah. So it'd be like saying, well, yeah, you got to do shot put and long jump and hurdles and
running. Oh, but you're a javelin throw. Well, too bad. That's what you got to do these. I feel like
their thought process was like a foot in the door technique. Like, we get all three and then because
if it's just speed, then they could just be like, well, we already gave you speed. Why do you need
more? Yeah. Yeah. I understand the argument. I just don't think that the solution was attractive.
I think that, and I think that the damage is done to the World Cup Series and the World Champs
actually counterweighs any benefit. Yes, a few athletes have done extraordinarily well out of it,
but the vast majority of athletes have probably regressed from it. Do you think it'll go back to
normal once everything's split out into three different disciplines in the Olympics?
I don't know how long we'll be in the Olympics. Like you think we'll get removed? Well, I can see
us being in LA because LA, you know, the US has a strong climbing culture and they have our
athletes that are relevant for medals. Are we going to be in Brisbane in 2032? Are we not? I
didn't know that was an option to not be in it anymore. Well, this is the question. Like
how many strong climbers does Australia have? By then, will Campbell and Osh still be around? Will
the next generation be medal prospects? Does Australia want to spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars building a climbing stadium for a sport that they won't do well in?
We're still a French sport. As far as I'm aware, we're not a core sport yet.
Oh really? Well, I guess I kind of thought once you get into the Olympics, you kind of just
stay there. Like they don't remove sports, do they? No, they can. They can do. And so that's the thing.
If Olympics disappears after three Olympics, was it worth it? I desperately hope that we make it
for Brisbane. I think that once you've done three, you should pretty much be a core sport,
but I'm not sure how that works with us changing the format of the sport every time.
Oh, interesting. There's layers of politics and complexities behind this that I'm not okay with.
And so I can't give an expert opinion, but I can definitely see challenges. I mean, ideally, yes,
I'd love to see three disciplines competing for three medals, and I'd love to see
the World Cups giving back their relevance because people aren't having to sacrifice
to train for something that isn't their priority.
So that they're better in Olympic qualifier, but it's also going to change the sport going forward
because back in the day, a young boulder coming up was a young boulder, a young league climber was a
young league climber and so on. Now the cross pollination of skills from this, you always had
some multi-discipline athletes, but now you've got more than ever. So is that a good thing? I don't
know. Maybe it is. I won't lie. You probably won't find anyone less interested in
this year's Olympics than me because I am quite jaded by the impact that the Olympics has had on
the World Cups. And so I'm pretty anti. I hope the athletes do well. I hope the athletes have a
wonderful time. I hope the athletes and the presentation of the sport really sells the sport
to a broader audience and grows it. But I, at a personal level, am less engaged in it than I am
in a lot of other events. So, you know, I still think it's a lottery. I still think the scoring
system leaves a lot to be desired. I still think the selection process is ridiculous. I think that
this close to Olympics, when you have however many athletes, you know, you have to be very
focused on the Olympics when you have however many athletes don't even know if they're going to be in
yet. So how is their training cycles going? I think it's way too close to the Olympics for these guys
to be still trying to qualify in. They should have known six months ago. The IFSC always seems to
struggle with these things. And, you know, I don't say this as a hater, but I'm going to use the
Youth Olympics as an example. Youth Olympics was the first time they had, in Buenos Aires,
first time they had skating was the first time they had freestyle BMX, all these other sports.
So they, all the sports brought demonstration athletes who were top adults to do demos in front
of the youth. So skating had Tony Hawk and Leticia Bafoni, two of the best skaters in the world.
BMX had incredible dude from Australia called Logan won the gold at Olympics. And I can't
remember the other person's name, incredible athletes. We had Josh Levin and Charlotte Gereff.
So, you know, why did we not have Adam Ondra or Alex Honnold or
Sean O'Coxie or someone like that? And they were both good climbers in their own way,
but they weren't World Cup winners. They were just good climbers. They were, you know, Charlotte
Gereff was, and Josh were athlete representatives, but they weren't the top, they weren't Tony Hawk.
Yeah. You know, when they had the exhibitions on for the sports, and they had Tony Hawk and
Leticia Bafoni out on the skate ramp and there were thousands of people around watching,
when they had the exhibition on for climbing, there wasn't thousands of people.
So, you know, that sort of thing seems to just be the prerequisite short sightedness that I just
don't, when you're watching it, you're like, how did they miss this opportunity?
So yeah, that's, but that's just me. I'm, you know, I'm a grumpy old man at times,
a bit cantankerous. I mean, now they're trying with Alex Honnold, so maybe they've learned some
lessons. I thought that was a huge step in the right direction. And I won't lie, I was incredibly
impressed by his commentary. I thought he was just unfiltered enough to do an excellent job in
co-commentary. Got the personality for it. Well, I was surprised because I've only met him in passing
a couple of times over the last decade. And obviously I'm not friends with him, so because
I've only met him a couple of times and he didn't really come across as Mr. Personality, but.
He turns it on for the camera, I guess.
He turns it on for the camera. He's obviously savvy enough and sharp enough, but yeah, I was,
I was very impressed.
Yeah. Okay. One last question. I think we'll harken it back to the climbing photography
come full circle. What are the differences between competition climbing photography and
photography for other types of climbing, just like small gym climbing or alpine sport, trad stuff,
if you've done it.
Well, obviously I haven't done alpine. I quite like being alive.
I agree.
I refuse to photograph soloing. Even high ball bouldering can be uncomfortable because I have
had instances where climbers have had camera courage and have gotten over their heads and got
hurt because they've wanted to do something because they know a good photographer's there
and they think it would be a great photo, but they end up getting into a position they're not
really capable of getting out of. And that's pretty uncomfortable. So I drew a line in the sand
personally under that, that I wasn't, wasn't going to do photos like that.
Obviously one of the big differences is outdoor boulders. You've got a range of different
perspectives, outdoor routes the same. One of the major hindrances is they tend to be in public
areas. And so it's incredible how messy climbers can be. So you're up on a rope shooting down on
someone on a hard route and it looks like a tip on the ground because climbers have emptied their
bags everywhere. And so you're trying to like take clean photos without showing that there's
down jackets and rope mats and samler drappers and everything everywhere. That's actually one of the
bigger challenges for me shooting outside is that if you've got a background, you have to try and
ensure that the background is clean. Conditions can be pretty character building because good
climbing conditions can be horrible. Oh, I hate it. Yeah. Like it's cold. It's misery. I shot
Nathan Phillips on Voyager. And so I'd just been in Bishop shooting for a while and Bishop was about
10, 15 below freezing. But it was the desert. So it was actually quite comfortable because as long
as you had a down jacket on and thermals, you were, you know, it was very dry air and quite
comfortable. Then I went to Sheffield and Nathan had just done Voyager. So I went wanted to get
some photos on that because it was this legendary Ben Moon boulder. Beautiful looks on it. And so
legendary Ben Moon boulder, beautiful looks out over Burbage. And it was about six degrees Celsius,
about 42, 44 Fahrenheit. But it was humid and windy and we're wearing everything we owned. And we went
warmed up in the gym, drove up there within 40 minutes, we had to leave because we were
freezing solid. And it was just grim. And you know, he's stripping down to a t shirt and pants to
get on the climb. And then as soon as he's off, he's racking up and everything, beanie back on.
And it's just the conditions can be, you know, the guy's doing Burden of Dreams last winter,
the conditions there just for Will and that looks crisp, crisp, very crisp.
Wait, so quick detour question. Does this happen after they already do the climb and then they just
like take photos pretending like they're doing the climb or? Totally depends. I prefer to get
actual attempts. That's the goal is to get actual attempts. But sometimes for a sponsor or something,
they might say, Oh, can you get photos after the fact? Or for instance, it depends on as well,
the climber. So Jimmy Webb was trying the game in Boulder Canyon, which is a legendary hard Daniel
problem. I think it's Daniel. Sorry to whoever sent it first, if it wasn't Daniel. And I said,
Hey, can I take photos of you on it? And he said, No, look, while I'm working it, I'd rather not
because it adds pressure and respect. So I left him to it. About half an hour later, he drove up
and said, I've just done that. Can you come down and take photos of me on it? So I then went back
and took photos of him on it just after he'd done it. flipside, for instance, Rustam Galmanoff,
when he did the second attempt to second ascend of hypnotized minds, which is a very hard Daniel v
16 in Rocky Mountain National Park. And we were there for the whole process. I took photos right
through. But I actually when I went, he's gonna send now, I actually flipped a video and videoed
the scene because I was like, well, that's gonna stop anyone going, Oh, well, did he really do it?
Well, you know, so even though I'm not a videographer, I'm definitely a photographer.
I flipped a video just for the scene, which was reasonably clean video until he gets to the top.
And I'm shouting, Can someone put mats under the top out and scurrying backwards to get out of the
way? So the video goes a bit average then. But um, yeah, you're trying to take photos of them while
they're doing it. But it comes down to the climber. Some of them. Yeah, just a bit. You know,
the outdoor climbers can be, you know, outdoor climbing is being an elite outdoor climber can
be freaking grim. Because you got to go to these out of the way places, wait days for the right
conditions, have a couple of attempts, split it up, go back to your Airbnb or whatever, wait days
again for the conditions, go out, split another two, you know, it's, it's not a glamorous life.
It's pretty dedicated. But it actually reminds me of a fun Will Bosse story. We were in Innsbruck
for World Championships. And some guys came up. And I was standing with the English boys and they
said, Are you Eddie from the circuit? And I said, Yeah. And they said, Can we get a photo with you,
which was embarrassing because I was standing next to Nathan Phillips and Jim Pope and Will
Bosse. And I said, Well, no, take a photo of these guys. I'm just a photographer. These guys are
stars. And I was like, Oh, no, we always followed your photos. Can we get a photo of you? Wow.
So it's like, only if you have the other guys in the photo. So I got I made sure that it was me
and the good climbers in the photo. And they didn't care at all about the climbers. Well,
they didn't know who they were because they were just random Brits. Oh, okay. Yeah. Um,
you know, these are German kids and they didn't know who any of these guys were. And I'm
now sure that if they look at those photos now, they're like, Look, I got a photo of Will Bosse
because he remembers who I am. I'm gone. I'm old news. But they're probably far more excited
that Will Bosse is in the photo. But that was a cool trip because after that, we went to
Adidas Rockstars. And we he climbed there, I took photos. And then we were going to come back down
and train in Munich for a week and then drive down to Cran for the World Cup in Slovenia. But
it was Oktoberfest. So there was no room in Munich. All the hotels were basically full.
So we drove down to Magic Wood and just I said, Hey, do you want to go bouldering instead? So I
drove him down to Magic Wood and he jumped on he did practice it for a while. And while we were
there, Felipe Camargo, Vadim Timonov, Dave Graham, Giuliana Camilini, all working practice.
And Will, who's pretty much unknown at this stage, just walks it in like three days. Like,
which was just, I mean, hard v15 outdoors, a bunch of the best outdoor guys in the world trying it.
This young kid just shows up and and then we drove down to Slovenia and from memory made finals. So
it was a good, good warmup. Okay. But it's been excellent watching his progression as a climber.
He's a absolute hero. It's a legendary hard man. Yeah, honestly, I didn't know he did competitions.
He was very good at competitions. Interesting to know. And lead competitions, even though
he's a very good boulder, he's a very good lead competitor. I had no idea. So yeah, he's made a
bunch of finals. So I made finals in Chamonix as well. And yeah, well, that's the problem of you
youngsters. I know, I gotta look back. But there's just, there's just so many. There's just so many
and COVID was such a speed bump and a lot of people changed their priorities and their,
their futures. And then yeah, that was like, there's like a COVID, pre-COVID period and a
post-COVID period and the sport has changed hugely. You know, I've been, except for coaching,
I've been off the road internationally since COVID. And it's funny when you watch it now,
it is a different generation. So, you know, the young kids I remember are now the old stages.
And the old stages are all retired and sitting behind their keyboards talking about how it's
not like it used to be. Yeah, I've heard that a lot of like the young kids grow up now wanting to
specifically do competitions and, of course, but then, you know, that was the same even in the day,
but then once they finish your competitions, they realize they've got the tools for outdoors.
Yeah. Because what people don't realize is that to be a good comp climber, you're doing all these
funny moves, but you're only doing these funny moves is because you're so good at the normal
ones that they need to do something to differentiate you. And so if you're a very good comp climber
and you can adapt to rock, you're probably going to be very good rock climber.
Yes. You I'm sure you have plenty of other stories, and I'm sure they're extremely interesting.
I can write a book.
Yeah, I think you should work on that because we're definitely out of time. And I appreciate
all the time that you spent with me today. This is going to be an awesome episode. So yeah,
I just want to thank you for joining me. Anything that you want to shout out or let people know
where they can find you or any other information that you might have, please let us know.
Find you or talk about future book plans.
I'm the circuit climbing on social media. I still exist to a limited degree, not as much as I used
to. Who knows one day my book might come out. Who knows one day it might not. I also want to give
a huge shout out to the brands that sponsored me over the years. Obviously I'm not active with a
lot of them, but like climbingholds.com, 80-510, Mad Rock, Carbon Grip, Climbskin. So many brands
helped me over the years, which being a photographer, you're generally not the
person in the spotlight. And at times it was a hard road. And I'm incredibly appreciative to
all those brands that put their money into the development of a sport by realizing that a
photographer was going to, or photojournalist was going to help promote it in the way I was able to.
And yes, I know huge thanks to everyone that supported me over the years, because it's been
a ride. And let me know if anything comes out. I can shout it out. Yeah, for sure. There'll be,
who knows, something at some stage. I mean, I still really do want to do the book. I just,
as I said, for mental health reasons, I had to step back. It was very draining and there was a
lot of emotions for a while there. But the great thing about the book is it's a part of history.
It doesn't have to be on time because it's already covering a historic period. And my goal for the
book was always something that, you know, one day Hannah Schubert's going to be sitting there with
her grandkids sitting on her lap and she'll be a little 85-year-old lady and she'll be like,
and she'll be showing her grandkids photos of what she did when she was young. And I'll probably be
long dead, but she'll be like, still talking about the work I did. So, you know, that legacy
aspect of photography and capturing something for the future is, you know, I don't want it to go to
waste. So I will eventually get the book out and, you know, one day, one day. Leave that impact.
But yeah, thank you again. It was amazing to talk to you.
No worries. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the podcast. Don't forget to like and
subscribe if you enjoyed. Otherwise, you are a super fake climber. If you're listening on
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discussion on the free competition climbing discord linked in the description. Thanks again
for listening.