Bouldering is one of the fastest-growing sports across the globe and service personnel from across all three services are picking up the sport.
Since Sports Climbing’s introduction as an Olympic sport at the Tokyo Olympics, more and more people have flocked to local indoor climbing centres to take up the sport.
Sports climbing includes three disciplines – bouldering, lead climbing and speed climbing.
Bouldering is seen as the most accessible of the three since there’s no extra equipment like ropes and harnesses involved, and many can go to their local climbing centres to take on bouldering problems on their own.
The UK Armed Forces Bouldering trials are seen as a stepping stone towards the Inter Services championships in 2025 as well as some international competitions planned for next year.
The men’s and women’s finals were contested by six competitors who had qualified in a preliminary round earlier in the day.
Their objective was to complete four problems within four minutes.
The women’s final was won by Royal Air Force climber Flight Lieutenant Bex Capewell, who was the most successful in completing all four problems.
She said: “It was really good, it was a really cool set and we had fun.
“The hardest [problem] was the one that I didn’t top, which is the yellow one, I was quite close at the end and it was really balancy and technical, but probably the easiest was the second one, that one really suited me.”
The men’s final saw a close battle between RAF climbers Corporal Brandon Phipps and Air Specialist 1 (Technician) Rhys Hall.
Cpl Phipps successfully completed the first three problems on his first try and looked set to win the men’s title.
But his teammate AS1 (T) Hall was right behind him and completed the fourth and final problem with ease.
Cpl Phipps, however, was unable to crack the challenging fourth problem and ended up conceding the men’s title to his RAF teammate.
AS1 (T) Hall said: “I’m really happy with it, I was surprised at the end.
“The whole thing came down to the last boulder and, yes, I’m surprised that I came out on top.
“Brandon was very strong all the way through, bashing everything up until this point where I previously fell on the first problem, and it all came down to the last two moves which I managed to top the last boulder.
“But, unfortunately, he didn’t manage to get quite as high on the last one.”
The Inter Services Bouldering championships will take place early next year.