By Philippe Beaufils | Published on
Grimp&Caux, a climbing club with around 140 members, is in good health despite a slight decrease compared to last year. When the suggestion to host the departmental championship in Dieppe was made, the response was positive. The competition will take place on Saturday, February 28 in the gymnasium of Ango High School. From the youngest to the most experienced, men and women, a spectacle is expected in this still relatively unknown sport.
In 2016, Grimp&Caux, only four years old at the time, hosted the Normandy speed climbing championships at the Ango High School gymnasium. An organization success for an association that only had around sixty members back then, but was on the rise. Over the following years, the club grew to around 150 members, with a slight decrease as explained by Antonio Delgado, one of the club’s coaches: “We have a branch in Auffay that lost about ten members and another in Dieppe where attendance is stable. Our youngest member is nine years old and it ranges up to different categories of veterans. There are supervised training sessions four evenings a week and also some open sessions, but always in the evening and with a guardian present. We sometimes share the gymnasium with handball or badminton, but it works very well.”
Specific tracks for the competition
So, this Saturday, for the first time, the local club is organizing a difficulty climbing competition (one of the three disciplines along with speed and bouldering), where climbers ascend as high as possible with a rope within a set time. Antonio Delgado explains: “With about ten volunteers from the club, we started preparing the gymnasium early in the week. We dismantled and cleaned the 37 routes and around 1,500 holds. Then, for two or three days, there are league members who come to set specific routes for the competition, routes that we will keep afterwards, but that the championship participants will only discover on Saturday morning.”
This championship is expected to attract around 120 climbers from across the department, as well as others from outside since Grimp&Caux has decided to expand the competition as an open event, with the only restriction being that participants from outside the department will not be ranked. One notable participant is a specialist from Montpellier.
Women kick off the event
This championship marks the first step towards the French championships, with the regional competitions in between where securing a place is crucial to qualify for the national event. Although they may not seem too concerned about this opportunity, Grimp&Caux representatives will do their best at home to achieve good results. It is worth noting that on Saturday morning, the women will start the event before giving way to the men in the afternoon.
Departmental difficulty climbing championship on Saturday, February 28 at Ango High School. Competition between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., and then between 1 p.m. and around 4 p.m.
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