On Thursday, July 23, national climbing federations were supposed to vote on whether Israel, Russia, and Belarus should be suspended from World Climbing. But according to information obtained by Vertige Media, World Climbing first presented member federations with the substance of three motions submitted between July 2 and July 8 by Cyprus, the United States, and Australia. It then combined them into a single unified motion, which was put to the General Assembly and adopted. As a result, the country-by-country vote that had been planned for months never took place in its original form. © Climbers for Palestine For months, World Climbing had been preparing for an unprecedented vote. On July 23, its member federations were scheduled to cast anonymous, nonbinding votes on three separate recommendations: one to suspend the Belarusian federation, one to suspend the Russian federation, and one to suspend the Israeli federation. The vote had been pushed in particular by Ukraine and by the group Climbers for Palestine, following a months-long campaign that we have covered in detail. But in the days leading up to the meeting, three new motions upended that plan. Three Motions Become One On July 2, 2026, World Climbing received a motion from the Cyprus Mountaineering, Climbing and Orienteering Federation, or CMCOF, signed by its president, Pavlos Georgiades. The motion explicitly called on the July 23 Extraordinary General Assembly to “refrain from proceeding with the proposed recommendations concerning the suspension of National Federations.” It also asked the Assembly to endorse as World Climbing’s official position the Executive Board’s February decision lifting the suspensions of Russia and Belarus. The motion cited recent amendments to the Olympic Charter that strengthened the principle of political neutrality. Six days later, on July 8—the deadline World Climbing had set for motions to be considered admissible—two nearly identical motions arrived. One was submitted by USA Climbing, the sport’s national governing body in the United States, and signed by its president, Marc Norman. The other came from the Australian federation. Their procedural request went further: remove the three country-specific motions from the agenda and replace them with a single general motion that named no countries. The new motion would recommend that the Executive Board adopt a “principles-based framework” for future decisions concerning the institutional participation of national federations. That framework would not require the board to take any particular action. It stated that the Executive Board “may” suspend a federation if it finds that the organization has violated World Climbing’s statutes, but it would not obligate the board to impose a suspension—or to refrain from doing so. Vertige Media reviewed both documents. Each relied on the same argument: World Climbing’s governance should be brought into line with the recently amended Olympic Charter, which emphasizes the political neutrality of sport. The motions also sought to prevent the General Assembly from becoming, in the words of the Cypriot motion, “a forum for geopolitical disputes rather than a body dedicated to the development of climbing.” According to our information, World Climbing did not put the Cypriot motion and the joint U.S.-Australian proposal to separate votes. Instead, it first presented the substance of each proposal to its member federations, then merged them into a single unified motion. That motion was subsequently put to the Assembly and adopted. In practical terms, the planned vote on the suspension of Belarus, Russia, and Israel did not take place in the form World Climbing had announced for months. Member federations were not asked to consider each country separately and issue a suspension recommendation to the Executive Board. Instead, they approved a text recognizing the reinstatement of Russia and Belarus as World Climbing’s current position while establishing a general, country-neutral governance framework for future cases. Under that framework, the Executive Board alone has the authority—but not the obligation—to suspend a federation. According to our information, World Climbing also announced that, regardless of the vote’s outcome, the Executive Board could refer allegations that the Russian, Belarusian, and Israeli federations had violated World Climbing’s statutes to a disciplinary commission. It did not specify which commission would handle the matter. That announcement opens another route for addressing the allegations documented in particular by Climbers for Palestine—one that could prove slower and less public. “Yes. I can say it right here, right now. It is absolutely certain. [...] So if it is 50.5 percent, we will follow it” Marco Scolaris, president of World Climbing, about the vote The Last-Minute Twist On July 10, two days after World Climbing received the American and Australian motions, World Climbing president Marco Scolaris sat down with us for an interview in Chamonix. Asked whether the upcoming vote could be trusted, he answered unequivocally: “Yes. I can say it right here, right now. It is absolutely certain. [...] So if it is 50.5 percent, we will follow it.” At no point during that portion of the interview did Scolaris mention the Cypriot motion, which had been received eight days earlier, or the American and Australian motions, which had arrived two days earlier and were addressed directly to members of the Executive Board, including Scolaris. Two weeks later, those same motions—combined into one—made his commitment irrelevant. Without a country-specific vote, there is no longer any question of whether the Executive Board would follow a suspension recommendation supported by 50.5 percent of the federations. On Thursday, July 23, shortly before the Extraordinary General Assembly began, Vertige Media sent World Climbing a series of questions. Had Marco Scolaris personally reviewed the motions submitted by the United States on July 8, Australia on July 8, and Cyprus on July 2 before our July 10 interview? Did he know about them when he assured us that the Executive Board would follow any suspension recommendation receiving 50.5 percent of the vote? If so, why did he not mention them? In the evening of July 24, World Climbing responded to us. In its first reply, the institution’s communications department said it did not understand “the scope of the question.” It added: “Marco Scolaris answered all your questions very clearly and amicably. The motions were received by the office, and not personally by the president, and were to be examined by the Executive Board in order to decide whether they were admissible and how best to present them to the General Assembly, which was held on July 21 and 22.” For World Climbing, “the country-by-country vote was not removed from the agenda. The motion changed the framework, and the General Assembly, within the democratic process, decided not to move forward with the other two votes.” Asked why President Marco Scolaris did not think it necessary to mention the motions during the interview, the federation replied: “On July 10, the agenda did not include the motions received on July 8, as they were to be examined by the Executive Board.” World Climbing's official statement, published late in the evening of July 23, confirms Vertige Media's information. On the disciplinary commission, the federation's text nonetheless specifies that the referral only concerns the ILCA (Israel) and the Russian federation, with Belarus not covered by this referral. This transmission does not presume any established violation and does not entail any immediate consequence. A presence from the IOC that raises questions What raises questions lies in another point revealed by the statement. The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Sports Director, Pierre Ducrey, was present at the Extraordinary General Assembly. According to the statement, he personally spoke during the meeting to present the IOC's current position, "including recent changes to the Olympic Charter concerning political neutrality and access to international sport," in the exact words of the statement. "The IOC's role is to apply neutrality at all times, free from governmental, cultural, societal or economic pressure" Point of the IOC's new Olympic Charter recalled by Sports Director Pierre Ducrey during World Climbing's Extraordinary General Assembly on July 23 Pierre Ducrey's intervention is not insignificant. Appointed IOC Sports Director on July 1, 2025, succeeding Kit McConnell, he presented amendments to the Olympic Charter adopted barely a month earlier, on June 24, 2026, at the IOC's 146th Session in Lausanne, as part of the process known as Fit for the Future. These amendments include the addition of a new paragraph to Rule 2 of the Charter, stating that the IOC's role is "to apply neutrality at all times, free from governmental, cultural, societal or economic pressure." Pierre Ducrey's arrival in a key position for climbing's Olympic future has rattled World Climbing. This is precisely what Marco Scolaris referred to in the interview he gave us on July 10: "We had a difficult moment, with the risk of being downgraded to an additional sport. Which considerably changes the financial situation for us." It is hard, in this context, not to question the weight that the presence of the IOC's Sports Director may have carried, coming to reaffirm the requirement of political neutrality to an Assembly called upon, minutes later, to vote on the suspension of three federations. All this, while climbing's own Olympic future depends directly on the IOC's goodwill for Brisbane 2032. Nothing indicates explicit pressure or coordination between the IOC and World Climbing on the precise outcome of the vote, but the structural incentive is hard to ignore. What Comes Next? For Ukraine and Climbers for Palestine, whose campaign led to the Extraordinary General Assembly being called, Thursday’s outcome represents a procedural setback. The group had argued that the Israeli federation should be suspended based on documented violations of its obligations under World Climbing’s statutes. Instead, it is left with a general framework that names neither Israel, Russia, nor Belarus, along with the possibility of a referral to a disciplinary commission whose scope, membership, and timeline remain unknown. We will continue reporting on the matter as soon as World Climbing provides more complete answers or releases its promised statement. This article was edited on 07/24/2026 at 12:27 PM, following the publication of World Climbing's official press release, issued in the evening of 07/23/2026.

Ariel-Britany Ward, a member of the U.S. collective The Dihedral, reflects in an opinion piece on the commercialization of climbing. She looks at how the rise of climbing gyms and the market has gradually turned a culture of sharing into an industry — and what climbers can still do to help change that. (cc) Jorch Alon / Unsplash Climbing gyms and, more broadly, the climbing industry are changing climbing culture as we know it. That doesn’t mean every gym is the problem. There are still gyms, guides, and communities intentionally working to preserve the values that made climbing special. Unfortunately, those places seem to be becoming the exception rather than the rule. Modern climbing evolved from mountaineering, exploration, scientific research, adventure, and a deep reverence for wild places. It was a sport built on curiosity more than competition. Success wasn’t measured by sponsorships or social media followers. It was measured by the experiences you had, the risks you managed, the relationships you built, and the respect you earned. At its core, climbing valued nature and people over profit. It was a culture rich with mentorship. If you didn’t know how to build an anchor, clean a route, place protection, or move efficiently on rock, someone showed you. Not because they were being paid. Not because it helped grow a personal brand. They taught you because someone had once done the same for them. Knowledge was something you passed on, not something you monetized. For nearly sixty years, climbing remained relatively niche. It slowly grew into what most people would recognize today throughout the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s. Growth happened organically, one climber introducing another. Then everything changed. Between COVID and climbing’s Olympic debut, the sport exploded into the mainstream. Millions of people discovered climbing almost overnight. Along with those new climbers came investors, corporations, influencers, content creators, venture capital, and businesses that recognized something climbers had largely ignored for decades… Climbing could be incredibly profitable. Suddenly, there was money in gyms, apparel, coaching, online courses, YouTube channels, social media, nutrition, supplements, climbing trips, recovery products, training apps, and endless amounts of gear marketed as the missing piece between you and your next grade. The problem begins when profit stops supporting climbing and starts shaping what climbing become Growth itself isn’t the enemy. Commercialization isn’t inherently bad either. Climbing gyms have introduced millions of people to a sport they would never have experienced otherwise. Without climbing gyms, many of us, including myself, might never have found this sport. Better equipment has made climbing safer. Professional route setters, coaches, and athletes deserve to make a living doing what they love. None of those things are bad. The problem begins when profit stops supporting climbing and starts shaping what climbing becomes. The barrier to entry has always been high, but today it feels increasingly inaccessible for anyone without significant disposable income. Shoes. Chalk. Harness. Rope. Quickdraws. Crash pads. Helmets. Guidebooks. Camping gear. Gas to get outside. Technical apparel. It adds up quickly. Indoor climbing has become no different. When I first started climbing, my gym membership was around $50 a month. That included everything from yoga classes, climbing classes, fitness equipment, and access to a community that wanted to help you improve. Today it’s common to see memberships starting around $85 just to enter the gym. Want access to fitness classes? More. Yoga? More. Specialized coaching? More. Add-ons continue stacking until a membership reaches $150–200 per month. And honestly… I understand why. Insurance is expensive. Commercial leases are expensive. Route setters deserve to be paid well. Employees deserve living wages. Walls need maintenance. Holds wear out. None of that is free. Money isn’t what’s complicating the situation. People are. We have a choice in how we build this community. Somewhere along the way, climbing slowly shifted from a culture centered around mentorship to one increasingly centered around transactions. Lessons became products. Training became subscriptions. Advice became premium content. Mentorship became coaching packages. Community became something you paid monthly to access. Even outdoor climbing has started to reflect this shift. Secret crags become exclusive content. First ascents become personal brands. Every climbing session becomes something to film instead of something to experience. Instead of asking, “Who can I help today?” We increasingly ask, “What can I post today?” Again, none of these things are inherently wrong. The issue is what happens when they become the norm. When every interaction becomes an opportunity to monetize, people slowly stop seeing each other as partners in a shared community and start seeing each other as customers, competitors, or audiences. Climbing deserves to remain a community first and a business second That changes culture. One of the things I love most about climbing is that grades have never been the greatest measure of who belongs. Some of the strongest climbers I’ve ever met weren’t the people climbing the hardest. They were the people lending crash pads to strangers. The people staying after their own session to belay someone trying their first lead route. The people quietly replacing worn anchor hardware. The people picking up trash that wasn’t theirs. The people spending an hour teaching someone to tie in instead of squeezing in one more burn on their project. None of those things make good content. None of those things generate revenue. Yet those are the very things that built climbing culture. The irony is that climbing has always marketed itself as being about community. And yet, community cannot be purchased. It can’t be built through branding alone. It can’t be manufactured by adding a lounge area or hosting a social night once a month. Community is built through generosity. It’s built through mentorship. It’s built when experienced climbers remember what it felt like to be beginners. It’s built when someone shares beta without worrying who gets credit. It’s built when knowledge is given freely because climbing has always been bigger than individual success. Capitalism didn’t destroy climbing culture overnight. It simply changed the incentives. It rewarded growth over stewardship. Consumption over conservation. Personal brands over quiet mentorship. Scale over relationships. And culture slowly followed. The encouraging part is that culture has never belonged to companies. It belongs to climbers. Every time you invite someone into your session, lend gear, mentor a beginner, share knowledge without expecting something in return, support local climbing organizations, volunteer for trail days, or remind someone to Leave No Trace, you’re helping preserve the best parts of climbing. Businesses will continue to grow. The sport will continue to evolve. Neither of those things are inherently bad. But growth without culture is just another industry. Climbing deserves to remain a community first and a business second. Because what made climbing special was never the gyms, the brands, the competitions, or the money. It was the people. And that part is still ours to protect. This article was originally published on The Dihedral.

Nearly 70 years after Georges Tairraz took his famous photograph of Gaston Rébuffat, Noa Barrau and Jean Rouaux tracked down the exact location in the Mont Blanc massif. But as they tried to recreate the original framing, they discovered that several of their reference points had disappeared. Jean Rouaux at the Pic du Roc © Noa Barrau Eyes fixed on his phone, Noa Barrau compares the landscape with the original photograph. He thinks he has found the spot where Georges Tairraz stood to capture Gaston Rébuffat on top of a rocky pinnacle. But the frame does not line up. Several of the landmarks the young photographer had chosen—sections of glacier and hanging seracs, unstable towers of glacial ice—are no longer visible. To reconstruct the image, he has to imagine where the ice would have been nearly 70 years ago. Finding the Pinnacle In the original photograph, Gaston Rébuffat stands atop a slender rock spire, four coils of rope in his right hand, with the glaciers and peaks of the Mont Blanc massif behind him. Taken by Georges Tairraz, the image was selected by NASA in 1977 as part of a collection intended to show life on Earth to a potential extraterrestrial civilization. Noa Barrau, a 23-year-old photographer and filmmaker, had been thinking about recreating the image for more than a year. He brought in Jean Rouaux, a 24-year-old alpinist who also grew up in the Chamonix Valley. Barrau was initially drawn to the photograph’s composition, framing, and period technique. Rouaux was more interested in the man at its center. “It was the person in the photograph who always inspired me,” Rouaux told us. “He made me want to go up there myself and take the idea all the way—to actually step into the photograph.” « Les gens peuvent penser qu’on s’est arrêtés sur une course classique, qu’on a rapidement fait la photo et que c’était terminé. En réalité, on n’était même pas sûrs que le gendarme existe encore » Noa Barrau In May, while lingering snow still made the climb impossible, the two began preparing. They put together a project file, studied the approaches, and searched for the clothing and equipment they would need for the recreation. Their first challenge was locating the scene precisely. The photograph is often associated with the Aiguille de Roc, but it was actually taken on a lower subsidiary summit known as the Pic du Roc. The location is poorly documented, and the two Chamonix locals did not even know whether the pinnacle had survived the rockfall that regularly reshapes the massif. The original photograph of Gaston Rébuffat by Georges Tairraz © Noa Barrau They flew over the area twice by paraglider to identify the formation. Two additional flights allowed them to land at the base of the route, carry some of their gear to the Tour Rouge bivouac, and establish caches. Their final approach began on foot from Montenvers, carrying 45- to 50-liter packs. For Barrau, that logistical work is the least visible part of the project. “People might think we stopped during a standard alpine climb, quickly took the picture, and that was it,” he said. “In reality, we weren’t even sure the pinnacle still existed.” From the bivouac, they took about four hours to reach the spire. Their speed came from years of experience. Rouaux has climbed since childhood and operates in the 5.13 range, while Barrau spends much of his time in the mountains and is highly skilled in both paragliding and high-altitude photography. But their efficiency on the route says little about the preparation required. They postponed the project several times because of moisture, clouds, or uncertain weather windows. They could only recreate the photograph under skies clear enough to match the lines and colors of the original. On the day they chose, the sky was blue, but winds of roughly 20 miles per hour swept across the ridge. To get into the right position, Rouaux had to repeat the final section six or seven times. The top was narrow, and he could not remain standing on the pinnacle for long. Between attempts, he lay back down on the rock and waited for the wind to ease. Barrau, meanwhile, had to hold his camera by hand because he had not brought a tripod. He needed to wait until “the framing was completely steady, Jean had all four coils of rope in his hand, he was looking in the right direction, and there wasn’t a gust.” Jean Rouaux in period costume © Noa Barrau They assembled the clothing with help from Jean-Franck Charlet, a Chamonix mountain guide and crystal hunter. The pants, socks, and boots were all vintage. The sweater was a recent reissue of a model similar to the one Rébuffat wore. The boots even surprised Rouaux, who had expected them to feel mostly heavy and stiff. “I didn’t expect them to grip so well,” he said. “You put your foot on a tiny edge and it holds. When I switched back to my modern mountaineering boots, I was almost a little disappointed.” « Les points de repère que je m’étais fixés étaient des zones de glacier et des séracs suspendus. Certains avaient disparu » Noa Barrau Historical accuracy ended where safety required it to. To reach the ridge, the two used a modern climbing rope, passive protection, and quickdraws. Rouaux also hid a harness beneath his pants and remained tied into it. A second knot around his waist recreated the rope system visible in the original photograph. Using a hemp rope, he said, would have been “not very smart,” especially for the rappels, or controlled rope descents. Their goal was instead to “respect the look of the period while combining it with modern safety standards.” Protection on the final section was still limited. Rouaux worked out the moves on his first attempt, then repeated them until he knew the sequence precisely. Once they had the photograph, the two still had to descend unbolted terrain with no established rappel stations or fixed anchors. The descent took nearly as long as the climb. What the Image Reveals To recreate Tairraz’s framing, Barrau divided the original photograph into four sections. In each corner, he looked for a landmark: a ridge, a summit, a section of glacier, or a hanging serac. He found the photographer’s position fairly quickly. He also identified the focal length: a 35-millimeter lens, common at the time and one Barrau regularly carries in the mountains. On the left is the original photo by Georges Tairraz; on the right is the one by Noa Barrau n theory, all he had to do was move a few inches forward or backward. But for about 30 minutes, he could not make the two images line up. “The reference points I had chosen were sections of glacier and hanging seracs,” he explained. “Some of them had disappeared. I had to find new ones and imagine that a certain rock matched a spot that would have been under the ice 70 years ago.” As he reconstructed the frame, he realized “how much had disappeared.” « Nous avons un devoir de protéger cette montagne que nous aimons tant » Jean Rouaux Any comparison between the two photographs has limits. The exact date of the original image, the amount of snow on the ground, the light, the weather, and the color processing all affect how the landscape appears. The photographs alone cannot provide a scientific measurement of the retreat of each visible glacier. Still, some changes are clear. In the newer photograph, the glacial surface appears less continuous, and several seracs visible in the older image are gone. For Rouaux, the difference is unmistakable. In the photograph of Rébuffat, he said, “the glacier almost forms a continuous blanket of snow across the entire landscape.” In the photograph taken in June, the scene looks “much grayer, with more moraine, a more fragmented glacier, and several masses of ice that have disappeared.” During his research, Rouaux also learned about Gaston Rébuffat’s concern for protecting the mountains and the natural world. He believes the alpinist would have been glad to see one of his photographs become “a witness to glacier retreat,” rather than serving only as a historical tribute. It is also a reminder, Rouaux added, “that we have a duty to protect this mountain we love so much.”

Forty years after the first international climbing competition in Bardonecchia, Marco Scolaris is serving his final term as president of World Climbing. Days before a vote on whether to suspend the Russian, Belarusian, and Israeli federations, he reflects on four decades spent building the sport—and on its uneasy relationship with politics. An extended interview from Chamonix. Marco Scolaris in Chamonix on July 12, 2026 © Louis Lepron for Vertige Media Vertige Media : In 1985, you were in Bardonecchia for the first international climbing competition. At the time, the climbing community was far from convinced. Marco Scolaris : People said climbing was supposed to be free. Wearing a competition bib was shocking. But in Turin, where I lived, most of us were saying: Be careful. If someone from outside the climbing world comes in and starts putting on successful events, climbers will be pushed aside. So we got involved. And little by little, we watched it grow. Vertige Media : That growth eventually created friction with traditional mountaineering, represented by the UIAA, the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation. Marco Scolaris : Constantly. The mountaineers wanted to control climbing. They thought the growth of climbing would put mountaineering at risk. There was a lot of drama and endless debate. Eventually, they asked us to leave. That was in 2006. We left, and in 2007 we founded the IFSC, the International Federation of Sport Climbing. “In 2007, I was a mountain photographer. International sports politics was a completely different world. When I found myself standing in front of IOC members in suits, well…” Vertige Media : At the very first founding general assembly, you raised the question of the Olympic Games. Did you really believe it could happen? Marco Scolaris : I asked everyone, “Do you want us to formally express our interest in the Olympics?” The vote was unanimous: yes. Then I asked another question: “Do you know what that means?” Again, everyone said yes. But the truth was, nobody knew. I certainly didn’t. In 2007, I was a mountain photographer. International sports politics was a completely different world. When I found myself standing in front of IOC members in suits, well… But we went for it. Later, someone asked me how long it would take. I said, given the circumstances, 20 years. And if you look at what happened, that’s basically how long it took. Vertige Media : So how does a sport get into the Olympics? Marco Scolaris : You have to build the sport, the competition circuit, media attention, and participation. If you want to enter the Olympics with a sport practiced in only 10 countries, that isn’t credible. You need a minimum number of national federations and a minimum level of participation, and you have to show that the sport is growing. By the end of the 2010s, all those pieces were in place for climbing. Vertige Media : How did IOC officials react to your proposal? Marco Scolaris : They came to watch competitions, and they were amazed. “The French climber is giving the Italian climber advice?” Yes. “And tomorrow the Italian will give the French climber advice?” Yes. They all told me, “Once you have a lot of money and television rights, that will change.” I don’t think it has. So we worked together to bring climbing into the Olympics while preserving the spirit of the sport and trying to offer a different model. You can’t change soccer today. But if you show that another model exists and can succeed, then little by little, you can have an influence. “At a time when private sponsorship money is becoming harder to find, things are tight. We’re trying to survive” Vertige Media : You still had to make compromises. In Tokyo, climbing’s Olympic debut used a combined format: speed, bouldering, and lead, the roped discipline. Did that feel like a sacrifice? Marco Scolaris : It was a bargaining chip. We can say that now. When the door opened for Tokyo, the IOC told us: You get 40 athletes, 20 women and 20 men, and one medal event. They suggested the combined format. It was a compromise. On our side, we thought it was either that or nothing. At least putting all three disciplines on display would introduce them to the entire world and give us a chance to secure more medals later. Paris would have two medal events. Los Angeles would have three. That was already the long-term plan. But at the time, we did a poor job explaining it to the athletes. The burden on them was too high. Vertige Media : What do you mean? Marco Scolaris : Speed climbing… Our climbing community didn’t understand it right away. It was new, and it came on a little suddenly. But the IOC especially liked speed because they could explain it to anyone in two minutes: “It’s the 100-meter dash, only vertical. They do it in five seconds.” Marco Scolaris, returning from a short jog. © Louis Lepron for Vertige Media Vertige Media : Is climbing’s place in the Olympics secure today? Marco Scolaris : No. Nothing is settled for Brisbane in 2032. The IOC presidency changed last year when Kirsty Coventry took over. More importantly, there is a new sports director, Pierre Ducrey of Switzerland. When he arrived, he didn’t have the historical background. We went through a difficult period when there was a risk that climbing could be downgraded to an additional sport. That would have major financial consequences for us. Things are better now. But we’re watching the situation very closely. Vertige Media : Speaking of finances, where does the federation stand today? Marco Scolaris : We started from very little. In 2007, our annual budget was €170,000. We peaked at €6 million around the Paris Olympics, and today we operate on €4 million to €5 million a year. That isn’t enough to do everything we want to do. At a time when private sponsorship money is becoming harder to find, things are tight. We’re trying to survive. Vertige Media : How? Marco Scolaris : We have to hold on until Los Angeles, when we’ll receive Olympic television-rights revenue. After that, things should improve. We have potential sources of revenue, including ticket sales, but we have to be transparent so people understand where their money goes. Sports governing bodies are constantly under attack today—look at Infantino and FIFA. The situations aren’t comparable. The money has never gone into my pocket. But the public image of sports leaders has been badly damaged. Vertige Media : This is your fifth and final term. The exemption from term limits drew criticism. How did that happen? Marco Scolaris : From the beginning, I said I would stop at 70. I’m 68. I also said it would take 20 years to reach the Olympics, and after that, my work would be done. So yes, there is this broader issue of term limits in international sports governance. Some federations introduced them retroactively, which meant every member of the board would suddenly have to leave at the same time. I was asked to stay. The part of the story I have never told is that I went to the IOC president at the time, Thomas Bach, and asked him directly. He told me, “Marco, I think you should stay through Los Angeles because the organization needs to be consolidated.” For the sake of transparency, we put the question to the general assembly in Singapore two years before the election. More than two-thirds of the member federations voted yes. Then, in the 2025 election, I ran again. I had an opponent. I won. Vertige Media : So this will definitely be your last term? Marco Scolaris : Absolutely. I’m a pioneer, not a settler. My role was to open the way. Once the organization is stable, you need someone who can build programs and present climbing in a different way. I’m also a little tired. [He smiles softly.] I can feel that my journey is nearing its end. Marco Scolaris, in Chamonix © Louis Lepron for Vertige Media Vertige Media : Earlier today—this interview was conducted on Friday, July 10—a pro-Palestinian demonstration took place here in Chamonix before the competition, a first for the city. What did you make of it? Marco Scolaris [smiling]: I read your article on the bus this morning, about the July 23 vote on suspending the Russian, Belarusian, and Israeli federations. In substance, I think 70 to 80 percent of it is correct. But there are two or three important inaccuracies. The first concerns the nature of the upcoming vote. The vote must remain a recommendation. Under World Climbing’s statutes, the authority to suspend a federation belongs to the executive board. If the general assembly makes a decision it has no authority to make, the suspended federation will sue, and it will win. Then it’s over. “Because sport should not take sides in political conflicts. If the sports world decides that one country is the aggressor and that its athletes must be removed, then we have to assess every conflict in the world. It is a moral and philosophical question, but also a tragically practical one” Vertige Media : What do you mean? Marco Scolaris : This is an invitation to everyone—the press, activists—to do things correctly. If the goal is to reach a suspension decision, you have to take the right path and follow the proper procedure. Vertige Media : The real question is this: If more than 50 percent of the federations recommend suspension, will the World Climbing board follow that recommendation? Marco Scolaris : Yes. I can say that here and now. Absolutely. There are 12 of us on the board, so I can’t promise it with 100 percent certainty. But we asked the question because we intend to listen to the federations. So if the result is 50.5 percent, we will follow it. Vertige Media : Why did it take so long to respond to allegations that cliffs and climbing areas had been seized by Israelis from Palestinians? Marco Scolaris : We have to be honest and transparent. Our official counterparts are the national federations, not individuals or associations. And we did respond. Maybe they didn’t like the answer, but we responded. The original document we received did not give us a legal basis to act. It discussed the actions of the Israeli government, not the Israeli climbing federation, the ICLA. It is not the role of an international federation to determine whether a cliff was seized by a government. Our legal adviser is very clear about that. But yesterday—July 9, 2026—we received new documents from the Palestinian federation that describe the actions of the Israeli federation itself in greater detail. The earlier documents did not provide a legal basis for action under our statutes. These new documents might. Vertige Media : On Russia and Belarus, you said suspending them was “a stupid decision.” Why? Marco Scolaris : Because sport should not take sides in political conflicts. If the sports world decides that one country is the aggressor and that its athletes must be removed, then we have to assess every conflict in the world. It is a moral and philosophical question, but also a tragically practical one. And we are grouping together situations that are completely different. Russia and Israel do not involve the same issues. Vertige Media : Have you discussed this with the IOC? Marco Scolaris : I told President Coventry it was a mistake. She wasn’t the one who made the decision at the time. Thomas Bach was president. But it was a mistake, and we entered a vicious cycle. Emotions were running high. It was two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. The IOC recommended exclusion, and we followed that recommendation. But something that takes five minutes to decide can take five years to undo. And we still haven’t undone it. “I’m saying there is unequal treatment. This year, there were strikes against Iran. What happened? Nothing. There was no response from the Olympic movement. When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, it became a global crisis for sports. That double standard is real” Vertige Media : But is it really possible for sport to remain neutral? Isn’t that naïve? Marco Scolaris : It’s extremely naïve. I know that. There is political pressure from governments, but there is also the moral question. We all see the photographs and the videos on television. Not only from Israel—from Ukraine, Congo… You want to respond. But once you take a position, everything becomes a mess. You no longer know where you’re going. And you end up powerless—and not especially consistent, either, because you eventually ignore some people while protecting others. I was at the general assembly of the International Paralympic Committee, sitting next to the president of the South Sudan Paralympic Committee. He told me, “We are forgotten. Nobody sees us.” Maybe because they don’t have oil? It’s complicated. Vertige Media : Are you criticizing a double standard? Marco Scolaris : I’m saying there is unequal treatment. This year, there were strikes against Iran. What happened? Nothing. There was no response from the Olympic movement. When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, it became a global crisis for sports. That double standard is real. And we try to follow governments—but which governments? The 40 European countries sometimes think they represent the entire world. More than 100 other countries see things differently. "Sanctioning someone is a form of war. Not with weapons, not with a rifle—but it is still war" Vertige Media : So what can the “Olympic movement” actually do? Marco Scolaris : It can try to remain a place where the countries of the world can come together peacefully. Athletes are the next generation of leaders. If we prevent them from meeting, talking, and competing against one another… This year, as far as I know, the Russian and Ukrainian climbers never crossed paths in competition, and the other athletes welcomed them without any problems. That matters. That’s why I say: Be careful with sanctions. Sanctioning someone is a form of war. Not with weapons, not with a rifle—but it is still war. You end up repeating the same pattern. That was the fundamental mistake we made in 2022. Vertige Media : As you approach the end of your final term, how do you see the state of the world? Marco Scolaris : I am a little disappointed, yes. The problems between Israel and Palestine have existed for 78 years. Israel cannot be the only one blamed. It is a collective responsibility. Some of the images are shocking. How can you remain indifferent when you see children watching a World Cup soccer game from the ruins of their home in Gaza? I have lost some of my faith. But still… [He pauses.] As a climber, you never lose faith. When we presented climbing to the IOC board in St. Petersburg and I realized we had missed our chance, a journalist asked me, “What will you do if you are selected?” I said, “We’ll climb.” “And if you aren’t selected?” We’ll climb. That is climbing. It is our sport, but it is also our way of life.

In the wake of Fontainebleau’s massive wildfire, climbers are grieving. But for those who have built their lives around climbing here, the sport itself now comes second. A report from inside a forest where time seems to have stopped. Climbers in Bleau at the edge of the forest © Louis Lepron for Vertige Media He takes a deep breath, then steps forward. As if bracing himself for what he is about to see, he grips the camera hanging from his shoulder. He steps over cracks in the earth and charred roots. The ground beneath his feet is still warm. The devastation is everywhere: blackened trunks, scorched boulders, and bare branches stretching into the distance. But what strikes Simon most is the silence. The trees that remain are still standing, yet there is not a sound. No birds. No glint of sunlight. Not even the feeling of wind. It is as though everything has stopped. Bleau on Fire Standing between two boulders, Simon listens closely to the French National Forests Office official accompanying him. Sophie David explains that when a tree trunk is burned more than two meters, or about six and a half feet, above the ground, the tree can be considered dead. Each one will have to be assessed individually. But David needs only to turn in a circle to estimate that two-thirds of the trees here will eventually come down. This is Trois Pignons, on the southwestern edge of the Fontainebleau forest, one of the areas hit hardest by the most destructive fires in the massif’s modern history. More than 2,000 hectares—12 percent of the largest state-owned forest in the Paris region—have burned. Nothing like this has happened here before. And it is not over. David places the back of her hand against a layer of peat that is still warm. The fire has been contained, she explains, but it is not yet out. Just a few yards away lies the famous 25 Bosses loop, along with a collection of boulders that have played an iconic role in climbing history. Simon stops in front of one of them. “This is Le Diplodocus, the boulder that gave the area its name,” he says. Then he points out its features. “When you tilt your head and look closely, it really does look like a dinosaur.” “The forest isn’t the backdrop to our sport. It’s the other way around: The forest is the reason our sport exists here” Simon Senet, climber and creator of the Instagram page Fontainebleau Boulder At 31, Simon Senet already knows the forest by heart. He describes his first visit, 10 years ago, as “love at first sight.” Coming from a commercial climbing gym in the Paris area, he immediately saw Fontainebleau as a completely different way to climb. While many of his friends treated the forest as an extension of their “playground,” Simon became interested in its natural heritage. As “a reaction against the obsession with performance,” he created an Instagram account called Fontainebleau Boulder, where he documents the countless stories behind the forest’s boulders. After standing silently in front of Le Diplodocus for several minutes, he finally speaks. “I’ve never come to Fontainebleau just to climb,” he says. “The forest isn’t the backdrop to our sport. It’s the other way around: The forest is the reason our sport exists here.” Bleau in Their Blood Every climber who spoke with Vertige Media made the same point. About 10 days after what they all describe as “a tragedy,” talking about climbing almost feels indecent. For them, the forest has always come first. Christophe Laumône started climbing in Fontainebleau long before climbing gyms existed. When the fire began on Sunday, July 11, firefighters stopped it about a hundred yards from his home. “I thought my life was going up in smoke,” he says over the phone. He means it both literally and figuratively. Climbing among the maritime and Corsican pines has defined his entire life on the rock. Now an instructor, he describes climbing less as performing on a boulder than as “sitting between attempts and looking at nature.” After the fear came what he now calls “a profound sadness.” In the areas where he put up hundreds of problems, the boulders are now charred. For someone who has climbed in the forest for more than 40 years, entire landscapes have burned away—and the memories tied to them. “The idea of climbing at Trois Pignons again is just unthinkable,” he says quietly. “It doesn’t make sense anymore.” “To me, it’s like when a family member suddenly becomes disabled. Everything is different” Gaëtane Potard, climber and secretary of the Respect Bleau association With thousands of boulder problems, Trois Pignons is one of the busiest areas in the massif. It may account for more than a quarter of all climbing traffic in the forest. Will these scorched boulders, formed from Fontainebleau’s ancient sands, ever be safe to climb again? “No one knows,” says Gaëtane Potard, secretary of Respect Bleau, one of the climbing organizations most active in protecting the forest. Some holds may have broken. The fire burned through the massif within about four inches of the ground’s surface, destroying roots that helped hold certain boulders in place and potentially making them unstable. “Either way, trees are going to fall onto the boulders,” Potard says. “There will be too much disruption for Trois Pignons to reopen anytime soon.” Sophie David of the National Forests Office stops short of confirming that assessment, but the agency may formally impose a one-year closure in the coming days. On the left, Simon Senet, and on the right, Tiphaine, at the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest © Louis Lepron for Vertige Media and Reporterre “We’re entering a waiting period that will change how we live,” Potard says. “To me, it’s like when a family member suddenly becomes disabled. Everything is different.” For the Bleausards—the local climbers who see the forest as essential as breathing—it means finding a new way to live. Many residents have already shifted into the role of caretakers. Climbers are helping public agencies educate visitors. Raphaël and Tiphaine are even patrolling with the National Forests Office, making rounds to ensure that no one ignores the ban on entering the forest. At times, they are also watching for anyone who might try to set it ablaze again. “That was my first instinct,” Raphaël says. Twenty-four hours after the fire began, the man in his 40s says he raced around the parking areas, checking for “other malicious acts.” Tiphaine, who was born here, says her greatest fear is that one person could start the fire again. She knows that 90 percent of forest fires are caused by human activity, with a significant number believed to involve deliberate or criminal acts. Between Fires Access points around the forest’s 25,000 hectares have been blocked with barriers and caution tape installed by police, forestry workers, and climbers. For Tiphaine, that collective effort shows “how deeply people care about the forest.” Raphaël also sees a practical benefit. “The National Forests Office knows the trails inside and out,” he says, “but I think they need climbers to keep an eye on the bouldering areas.” That is exactly what has happened. Fontainebleau averages around 30 fire starts each year, and climbers have often stepped in—sometimes putting out fires themselves with sand, sometimes reporting early warning signs, and often educating other visitors. “To me, something has changed. I’m seeing more and more new climbers who are obsessed with performance and don’t care about the environment around them” Aurélie Blaise, climber and president of the Bloc'age association Aurélie Blaise knows the problem well. She is the president of the climbing organization Bloc’age and runs a guesthouse in Noisy-sur-École. Along with cancellations, she has had to manage visitors’ frustration over being unable to climb. “I understand,” she says. “When you’ve planned your vacation around climbing, that can be hard to hear.” But beyond the fires, Blaise has also noticed what she calls “a troubling consumer mentality.” “People act as though they’re entitled to everything,” she says. “As if they assume someone else will clean up after them.” Wearing a fluorescent yellow tank top, Aurélie folds her arms before making her next point. “To me, something has changed,” she says. “I’m seeing more and more new climbers who are obsessed with performance and don’t care about the environment around them.” Aurélie Blaise © Louis Lepron for Vertige Media and Reporterre For Fontainebleau’s climbing community, the fire has forced a deeper reckoning. Millions of people now visit the forest, and some of their behavior is becoming a serious problem. “Climbers still smoke at the base of the boulders,” Tiphaine says. “Plenty of people bring a camp stove to make coffee,” Simon adds. “There’s a huge wave of solidarity right now,” Raphaël says. “But I know the difficult conversations may start tomorrow.” In fact, those questions are already being debated in WhatsApp groups and on social media. Should climbers have to pay for access? Should the forest be closed entirely whenever the fire risk becomes too high? Simon Senet is convinced that no matter how often climbing organizations repeat their warnings, the message is not getting through. “Only 1 percent of the people who visit this forest ever hear these messages,” he says. “We need to change how we communicate them.” Simon insisted on visiting Roche aux Sabots, where millions of climbers, including him, first learned to climb outdoors. The moment he arrives, he feels a deep sense of relief. Located close to nearby homes, the area was spared by the flames thanks to firefighters’ relentless efforts. Suddenly, the forest feels like itself again. The colors return. So do the smells and the feeling of wind. Simon seems restored by it. This, he says, is when his project feels most important. “To share the richness of the forest,” he says, “and with it, the entire heritage of climbing in Bleau.” That evening, he will head back to his keyboard and write the story of another boulder. For now, Sophie David jokes that the chalk marks are still here. And, miraculously, Simon smiles.

A few days after World Climbing’s extraordinary general assembly blocked a vote on suspending the Israeli, Russian, and Belarusian federations, Climbers for Palestine and Grimpe Solidaire Internationale (GSI) publish an op-ed in our pages. The groups condemn a last-minute decision to combine several motions, a voting procedure changed without meaningful debate, and possible collusion within the executive board of climbing’s international governing body. The Palestinian flag was hung on the peaks of Chamonix during the Climbing World Cup © a group of anonymous mountaineers On July 23, 2026, World Climbing, the international governing body for competitive climbing, failed a historic test for the sport. Instead, it became mired in a bureaucratic mess that fooled no one. By quietly combining motions and restructuring the voting process, World Climbing denied its members the opportunity to hold a legitimate democratic vote on suspending the Israeli, Russian, and Belarusian federations—even though those suspensions had received broad support at the previous general assembly on April 23. Backroom Maneuvering In early July, three national federations submitted motions intended to prevent that vote from taking place. The Cyprus Mountaineering Climbing Federation first filed a motion calling for the vote to be canceled and, among other things, for the Russian and Belarusian federations to be reinstated. Then, on the filing deadline set by World Climbing, USA Climbing and Sport Climbing Australia submitted identical, word-for-word motions. Their proposal would replace separate votes on each federation’s suspension with a framework based on “objective criteria, political neutrality, proportionality, nondiscrimination, and transparency”—the same principles already written into World Climbing’s governing documents. Representatives of both federations hold vice presidencies on World Climbing’s executive board, the 12-member body that makes the organization’s key decisions. Were they genuinely trying to clarify how the rules should be interpreted, or were they simply trying to stop the vote? World Climbing’s executive board then decided, in its own words, to combine the spirit of those “three” motions and change the voting process accordingly. The federations were informed of these major changes only 24 hours before the extraordinary general assembly began. The federations we have spoken with say the late notice gave them almost no time to assess the consequences or challenge the new procedure. The motion drafted by the executive board also changed how the vote would work. Instead of holding a standard yes-no-abstain vote on each of the three federations, World Climbing created a decision tree in which the unified motion would be voted on first. Then there was the unusual appearance of Pierre Ducrey, the International Olympic Committee’s new sports director, at the extraordinary general assembly. Ducrey spoke about the new Paragraph 5 of the Fundamental Principles of Olympism, which states: “The IOC’s role is to remain neutral at all times and resist all governmental, cultural, societal, and economic pressure.” He addressed the assembly immediately before the vote. Climbing also still faces the possibility of being downgraded to an additional sport at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. World Climbing President Marco Scolaris acknowledged that risk in a July 12 interview with Vertige Media: “We’re watching the situation closely.” Was Ducrey’s appearance simply a coincidence of scheduling, or was it a message delivered before a decisive vote? “The vote looked fair on the surface, but the outcome had already been locked in. How much will our sport sacrifice to protect its Olympic status if the price is stripping away its core values?” Sleight of Hand and Hypocrisy In light of these events, we have every right to ask: Did some members of the executive board collude to influence what should have been an independent and impartial vote? A vote did take place—but we must be clear about what members were actually allowed to decide. By imposing a new motion and a decision tree instead of holding a straightforward, federation-by-federation vote, World Climbing prevented any individual review of the Israeli Climbing Association’s case. The evidence, the facts, and the question of responsibility were never debated on their merits. The adopted motion preserves the status quo. Israeli athletes continue to represent their country, while Russian and Belarusian athletes compete as Individual Neutral Athletes. By a narrow majority of its member federations, World Climbing has chosen to continue applying suspensions selectively and inconsistently through a conveniently structured motion. The vote looked fair on the surface, but the outcome had already been locked in. How much will our sport sacrifice to protect its Olympic status if the price is stripping away its core values? These procedural games are not merely internal governance disputes. While World Climbing became bogged down in its own process, Palestinian climbers continued to be assaulted, harassed, and imprisoned. The human cost is immediate and documented. We are deeply concerned that the Israeli Climbing Association continues to be allowed to engage in conduct that contributes to serious violations of international law and World Climbing’s own rules. This includes the annexation of climbing areas in the occupied West Bank and the maintenance of a system that denies Palestinians equal access to their own land. We are also outraged that a legitimate democratic vote was blocked through procedural maneuvering that creates no path forward beyond the one that already existed—and that it took enormous pressure for World Climbing to take even minimal action. “In a sport that claims to value courage, a connection to nature, and the pursuit of freedom, we must look to Palestinian climbers to understand what those values truly mean.” After this charade, World Climbing congratulated itself for adopting a “framework based on objective governance criteria, proportionality, and nondiscrimination.” In reality, by refusing to hold the Israeli Climbing Association accountable, World Climbing is disregarding both its own governing documents and the Olympic Charter. The charter also clearly requires sports organizations such as World Climbing to remain politically neutral. Yet this outcome provides no new way to address Israel’s violations of laws and rules. Instead, it prevents athletes from receiving timely and equal protection, suggesting that the assembly’s actions primarily reflect the political positions of its members or their governments. World Climbing’s announcement that the allegations against the Israeli Climbing Association will be referred to a “disciplinary commission” is nothing more than a meaningless delaying tactic. The organization has provided no transparency about who will sit on the commission and no timeline for its work—more than 10 months after Climbers for Palestine submitted its complaint. The complaint was emailed on September 30, 2025, by Climbers for Palestine Spain to the organization, then known as the IFSC, under the subject line “Information regarding the Israeli Climbing Association.” World Climbing did not even confirm that the allegations would be referred to the disciplinary commission until after the July 23 extraordinary general assembly. Why should the community believe that this commission will act quickly or honestly when World Climbing has delayed action against the Israeli Climbing Association for nearly a year? This Concerns All of Us We demand a public and transparent investigation into these allegations. Blocking the vote has once again created an unnecessary delay in World Climbing’s procedures. This was a deliberate decision by many of the organization’s leaders, and it will have real consequences for Palestinian climbers: physical assaults and harassment by illegal settlers, as well as arbitrary imprisonment. Abdallah Motan, a Palestinian climber, has been held without trial since January 13, 2025. These harms are documented and ongoing. Ending them will require the continued attention and mobilization of the global climbing community. This year, climbers around the world came together to prevent competitive climbing from being used to sportswash violence and land theft against Palestinians. Thousands wrote to their national federations and World Climbing’s leadership to condemn the actions of the Israeli federation and demand that the organization do what is right. Although a narrow majority of federation leaders rejected our appeal, we are proud of and grateful to the many climbers—professional and recreational alike—who did not. This story has always belonged to the climbers of Palestine. In a sport that claims to value courage, a connection to nature, and the pursuit of freedom, we must look to Palestinian climbers to understand what those values truly mean. Despite this outcome, Climbers for Palestine will continue to follow their example. We will try to face these new challenges with the resolve and dignity shown by our Palestinian brothers and sisters. As they fight for freedom, we will continue to hold accountable those who seek to take it from them. These climbers are showing us what real courage looks like. We hope the entire global climbing community will soon follow their lead. Climbers for Palestine and Grimpe Solidaire Internationale (GSI) are independent organizations that advocate, among other causes, for recognition of the rights of climbers in Palestine.

A recent scientific review confirms that finger-strength testing is getting more reliable. But between the famous 20 mm edge, portable sensors, and the very real chaos of chalk, putting a climber’s finger strength into numbers is still a serious challenge. (CC) Brook Anderson / Unsplash On a hangboard—a training board with small holds—the feeling usually comes before the number. One edge feels sharp. Another bites into the skin. A full crimp loads the fingers a little too hard. Your skin is too thin, the gym is too humid, your fingers are too cold, or the method still hasn’t clicked. One day, the same move feels obvious. Three days later, it makes no sense at all. And yet, over the past few years, a new language has made its way into training logs: kilos, newtons, ratios, asymmetry curves. In fall 2025, researchers reviewed the available scientific literature in a systematic review published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, a scientific journal focused on sport, physical activity, and health. A systematic review is a specific kind of research paper: it examines existing studies according to a method defined in advance. Their question was simple: are the methods used to measure finger-flexor strength in climbers actually reliable? The Problem The goal of the science here is not to decide whether one number can sum up a climber’s ability. The goal is consistency: if the same person repeats the same test under similar conditions, are the results comparable? On that point, the answer is fairly reassuring. Fourteen of the 15 studies analyzed reported high reliability for at least one measurement. For maximum isometric strength tests—pulling as hard as possible without moving—12 studies showed very stable results from one attempt to the next. The authors described the reliability as “good to excellent.” In the 2025 review, fixed 20 to 23 mm edges appeared in eight of the 15 studies analyzed That finding backs up a broader trend. In 2023, an earlier systematic review on physical testing in climbing had already shown just how central fingers are to climbing research: upper-body and finger-strength tests appeared in 120 of the 156 studies analyzed. But that same review also pointed to a methodological mess. For finger strength alone, researchers counted “almost 230 different ways” to run the tests, depending on the type of hold, its depth, arm and body position, hand spacing, force thresholds, and rest times. In other words, climbing is swimming in data. But not everyone is measuring the same thing yet. A hang from an edge, an isometric pull on a specific hold, a one-arm test, a two-arm test, a half-crimp protocol—the half crimp is the common bent-finger position between open-hand and full crimp—or an open-hand test can all produce numbers. The question is which numbers can actually be compared. 20 Millimeters, the Gold Standard In this scattered landscape, one number keeps coming back: 20 millimeters. Along with its slightly larger cousin, 23 mm, that edge depth has become a common reference point in the scientific literature. In the 2025 review, fixed 20 to 23 mm edges appeared in eight of the 15 studies analyzed. The authors found that these depths consistently showed strong reliability and should be prioritized for standardized monitoring. The 20 mm edge has become a practical measuring unit, linking labs, training apps, portable sensors, and home testing setups. It turns a feeling—“my fingers feel weak right now”—into data that can be compared over time. Several recent studies have tracked that shift. In 2022, a study published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living evaluated the Tindeq Progressor, a commercial sensor used to measure force. Twenty-five experienced climbers, 16 men and nine women, were tested in specific positions, including a one-arm pull on a 20 mm edge. Compared with a laboratory force plate, the device scored between 0.90 and 0.99 out of 1 for reliability in the two tested positions. In plain English: its measurements lined up almost perfectly with the reference device. It was also highly stable when tests were repeated on the same day or several days apart. The authors concluded that the Tindeq can be considered a “valid and reliable” tool for detecting training-related changes in strength outside the lab. There is also a clear representation problem. The review does not provide a consolidated women-men breakdown across the 747 participants. A year earlier, a study published in PLOS ONE, a broad open-access scientific journal, showed why these measurements matter so much for training. Fifty-seven male climbers—17 intermediate, 25 advanced, and 15 elite—performed isometric pulls on a 23 mm hold in a half crimp, with the elbow bent at 90 degrees. The result: elite climbers produced greater maximum force than the other two groups. They also stood out for their rate of force development, meaning their ability to generate a lot of force quickly. For the authors, maximum strength and rate of force development can help distinguish elite climbers from advanced and intermediate climbers. So the number does not replace climbing. But it is starting to matter in how climbing is trained, tracked, and compared. It is no longer just about whether you can “hold small.” It is about how much force you produce, how you produce it, on which hold, how fast, with which hand, and sometimes how big the gap is between sides. Still a Guess? The 2025 review still comes with real limitations. Protocols remain highly inconsistent: one-hand tests or two-hand tests, simultaneous measurements or not, maximum strength, endurance, critical force, rate of force development, hold depths ranging from 6 to 60 mm. The spread was so wide that the researchers did not run one overall meta-analysis. Combining the results would have created a sense of certainty that the protocols themselves could not really support. For climbers, an even more obvious issue stands out: the lack of control over real climbing conditions. In a sport where a hold that is too cold, too sweaty, or loaded with chalk can ruin an attempt, only four of the 15 studies monitored temperature and humidity across tests. Only one explicitly mentioned chalk use during measurements. The authors noted that cold can reduce finger-flexor performance, especially endurance, and that chalk, which is supposed to dry the fingers, can under some conditions reduce the coefficient of friction. There is also a clear representation problem. The review does not provide a consolidated women-men breakdown across the 747 participants. That absence is itself meaningful. In the summary table, two studies were male-only, with 93 and 31 men, respectively. One study included men and women without detailing the breakdown there. Another included 31 climbers and non-climbers without specifying participants’ sex. The others included both men and women, but the review does not always make clear whether results were analyzed separately. That is not a minor statistical detail. The authors wrote that gaps in participant characterization matter because sex and sport experience can influence results. They called for better-balanced protocols, especially for analysis by sex and ability level. The same issue appears in the 2021 PLOS ONE study often cited on strength and rate of force development. It included 57 climbers, but no women, and its authors acknowledged that the results may not necessarily apply to female climbers at the same level. Finger strength, then, is becoming easier to measure well. But the number still has limits. It isolates one physical ability in a strict setting, on a specific hold, with a specific protocol, under conditions that may or may not be controlled. It does not see route reading, footwork, stress management, skin fatigue, movement efficiency, or the simple feel for a move. That makes it an excellent diagnostic tool. But we are still a long way from an algorithm for climbing.

Several members of the French Alpine Club of Casablanca have reported sexist comments, unwanted touching, late-night messages, and being pushed out after setting boundaries. Their accounts follow an internal petition challenging the absence of women from a route-development course, and raise broader questions about power within the club’s climbing section. (cc) Brook Anderson / Unsplash Since 2020, several women connected to the climbing section of the French Alpine Club of Casablanca say they have experienced or witnessed troubling behavior. Some still belong to the club; others have left. Not all of them know one another. Their accounts come in addition to an internal petition challenging the absence of women from a route-development course in Merzouga, a village in southeastern Morocco. The French Alpine Club of Casablanca, known as CAF Casablanca, is an association governed by Moroccan law and affiliated with the French Federation of Alpine and Mountain Clubs, or FFCAM. In Casablanca, its climbing section is the city’s only organized climbing facility. Members go there to climb, learn technical skills, take outdoor trips, gain access to club outings, and improve within a community setting. For this investigation, Vertige Media spoke with roughly 10 people connected to the climbing section, including seven women, and reviewed documents, screenshots, and internal communications. Access, Power, and Silence Aminah*, a former member, says she left CAF Casablanca in August 2024 after four years of climbing there regularly. The atmosphere had become unbearable, she says. “I tried not to think about it too much and to focus on climbing, but it was very hard to stay in an environment like that, with so much toxicity and so much harassment.” According to her account, the behavior began during her first year at the club. “It started with comments about my body, about my butt.” She says that when she mentioned her Moroccan roots, Hamid Lemasra, an instructor and contractor for the club, told her she could not be from that region “because women from there don’t have a figure like [hers].” Another member who was at the club that evening confirmed hearing the comment. “I would go to the gym, no one would agree to belay me, and I would end up packing my things and going home” Aminah*, a former member of CAF Casablanca Among the women around her, Aminah says, late-night messages became a recurring subject. “When it was two in the morning, we would text each other and ask, ‘Did he message you too?’” Other women also described receiving private messages, sometimes within their first few weeks at the club. Aya*, who joined CAF Casablanca in February 2020, says she received messages from Lemasra. “It was hard to figure out what was happening. Was he hitting on me? How was I supposed to react? Should I be nice and pretend he was just being friendly, or should I be firm and risk not being welcomed at the club?” She says she eventually stopped responding, turned off read receipts, and avoided contact with him. Inès*, a current member, says she set boundaries after physical contact she considered overly familiar and repeated late-night messages. She also says she received messages she found intrusive. Vertige Media reviewed several screenshots of WhatsApp conversations. One message reads: “So you fantasize too?? [sic]” After Inès avoided answering directly, another followed: “A fantasy is a different kind of dream.” Other screenshots from 2022 show late-night or ambiguous messages, including “Hey, beautiful” and “No, it’s just that I like you a lot.” In a conversation about an outing, another message reads: “Whenever you want, I’ll take you wherever you want [sic].”Inès says she reported the messages to club president Chantal Aounil but, in her view, no concrete action followed. Another account involves unwanted physical contact. Fatima Zahra, a CAF Casablanca member who agreed to be identified, says the incident took place in 2021. While she was belaying a climber—managing the rope to protect them in a fall—she says Lemasra kissed the back of her neck. “I screamed. Of course, I had to hold myself back because I was belaying. It was so disgusting.” Several women described what they saw as the same consequence after setting boundaries: they were gradually shut out. Aminah* says she lost access to training opportunities despite being a dedicated member. “It was like we had been banned from the group.” Eventually, she says, she could no longer find anyone willing to belay her. “I would go to the gym, no one would agree to belay me, and I would end up packing my things and going home.” Inès describes a similar pattern. “He stopped talking to me for months. And of course, he wasn’t the only one who stopped talking to me.” “It wasn’t sexual harassment. It was more a matter of perception” Chantal Aounil, President of CAF Casablanca Isabelle*, another former member, says her experience at the club changed after she turned down unwanted attention. She arrived “full of enthusiasm” and was initially “welcomed very warmly.” But she says the situation shifted after she separated from her partner at the time. “The messages became more explicit, and I made it clear I wasn’t interested. That’s when things became difficult for me. It happened when I said no.” She later describes a confrontation with Lemasra. “He literally screamed at me in front of a group of people.” According to Isabelle*, the incident prompted “no reaction of any kind” and marked the beginning of her exclusion from the group. She also says other women confided in her. She describes a “code of silence.” “These women wanted me to become their spokesperson, but above all, they didn’t want to have to speak themselves.” Today, Aminah* says she is waiting for CAF Casablanca to be restructured—or for another climbing gym to open in the city. “I’ve spoken with a lot of women who told me they quit climbing because they didn’t feel safe there.” She sums it up this way: “As soon as you speak up about something that’s wrong, you become the enemy.” Contacted by Vertige Media, Lemasra disputed these accounts. Asked about messages sent late at night or considered intrusive, he said he was “genuinely shocked.” He denied making comments about members’ bodies. “That’s completely absurd. It is absolutely not true.” More broadly, he said his dry or ironic sense of humor may have been received poorly. “I’ve always had a kind of second-degree humor at the club that some people may not like. I completely understand that.” Asked about the physical contact described by members, he said ordinary greetings had been taken out of context. “Culturally, saying hello and hugging someone—you can’t do that anymore. People used to.” Aounil says she met with some members after the first concerns were raised. “It wasn’t sexual harassment. It was more a matter of perception.” The club president says she is “very sensitive” to these issues, particularly because of her background in human resources, and says she offered to hold discussions with the women involved. More recently, comments describing this kind of behavior appeared beneath a FFCAM LinkedIn post about women’s place in the mountains. The post was later deleted, but Vertige Media reviewed screenshots. In one comment, Moroccan outdoor influencer Meryem Belkihel said she had “evidence, screenshots, and conversations” documenting troubling behavior involving “more than a dozen female members” of CAF Casablanca. She called for the matter to be handled by an appropriate authority. Niels Martin, FFCAM’s director of communications and regional development, told Vertige Media that the post was likely deleted because of a procedural mistake. “I think she [the person managing the page] confused deleting the comment with deleting the post.” Martin also said the federation had received no official report concerning CAF Casablanca and that its unit dedicated to abuse and violence had “not been activated.” He stressed, however, that “the club is autonomous” and that its president remains “the first person responsible for what happens within the club.” Martin added that in 2025, CAF Casablanca sent 11 instructors and club leaders to a training session on gender-based and sexual violence. He described that level of participation as significant compared with the average among affiliated clubs. Aounil confirmed the figure and said she had attended the training herself. Asked whether Lemasra participated, she said she did not “have the list [of attendees] in mind.” Women Left Out Members have also challenged the way technical skills and training opportunities are distributed. From February 15 to 22, 2025, CAF Casablanca held an outdoor route-development course in Merzouga, near the edge of the Sahara in southeastern Morocco. The course covered equipping outdoor climbs, including installing bolts and anchors. In its 17th newsletter, the club described the course as being organized jointly with FFCAM’s climbing commission. No women appeared on the list of selected participants. The explanation given internally angered some club members. “I’m not saying I didn’t make those comments. I should have phrased it differently” Chantal Aounil, President of CAF Casablanca Amir*, a club member, says he learned about the course from an FFCAM instructor, not through an official club announcement. He requested a meeting, which took place on December 18, 2024, with Aounil and others present. “Members had received no information, so we wanted to discuss the selection process with the club’s leadership and ask how the course had been communicated to members,” he says. According to Amir*, the lack of transparency was not unusual. “CAF never shares information about training courses before they happen, and there are no selection criteria. It’s pure favoritism.” In a transcript of the meeting posted in the club’s WhatsApp group and shared with Vertige Media, Amir named several women who were active in the climbing section. The president responded: “No girls will take part in this course.” She then added: “Girls don’t have the physical ability to carry the gear. It would be too hard for them.” Elmehdi, a longtime member who attended the meeting, confirmed that the comments were made but said the reasoning was unfounded. “Those two women were in better physical condition than most of the men. They were also more qualified because they climbed outdoors more often, were more involved, and climbed at a higher level.” On February 21, 2025, members circulated a petition in the club’s WhatsApp group criticizing the lack of a public announcement, the absence of objective criteria, and the risk of favoritism in access to training. Aounil denied that anyone had been excluded because of gender, though she acknowledged that her wording had been problematic. “I’m not saying I didn’t make those comments. I should have phrased it differently.” She cited the required fitness level, the demands of the trip, the need to rotate training opportunities among different members, and the expectation that participants would later use those skills to support the club. A Closed System Beyond the specific incidents described, the accounts raise broader questions about how the climbing section operates: Who makes decisions? Who gets access to training? Who is allowed to teach or supervise others? And who can challenge the system without being pushed aside? Some members do not want the club to be defined solely by its failures. Elmehdi, who has been active in the section for several years, says he received “a warm and supportive welcome” and “excellent technical training” there. The club gave him “an opportunity to grow and develop new skills,” he says, even though he now strongly disagrees with the way the climbing section is governed. Amir* describes a section controlled by a small group of longtime figures. He focuses in particular on Lemasra, whom he describes as the person who “takes over every decision related to climbing.” According to Amir*, anyone who tries to change the way the section operates eventually runs into the same obstacle. “Whenever passionate people come in and want to help climbing develop here, they always end up facing Hamid.” Lemasra acknowledges that he has held a longstanding and central role at the club. A member since 1998, he says he has managed the climbing program since 2006, working as a mountain guide, contractor, volunteer, and “technical adviser to the club.” But he denies having personal decision-making power. “I don’t make any decisions on the board.” He says he works as an instructor during training courses but does not choose the participants. Aounil also rejects the idea that Lemasra holds informal power. “Hamid does not make the decisions. People need to stop saying he has power. That’s a myth.” Sofia*, a former member, nevertheless describes an atmosphere in which challenging the status quo is difficult. She says she witnessed sexist comments directed at women climbers and aggressive reactions when she set boundaries. “Everyone who goes there initially thinks they’re going to find some kind of safe space built around sports and the mountains,” she says. In her view, the problem is an organization that protects certain longtime figures. “I don’t understand why he is so protected. I don’t understand why people are so afraid of him—afraid to confront him or remove him.” She describes it as a system in which people conform because they believe doing so is the only way to belong. “It’s a system where everyone around it, whether they agree or disagree, follows the same patterns because they think that’s how they’ll be accepted and included.” Lemasra and Aounil, for their part, say the criticism stems from frustration over access to training. Lemasra says “the Merzouga course was the last straw” and claims the allegations emerged after the internal petition failed. *Names marked with an asterisk have been changed.

During the heat wave, Arkose’s non-air-conditioned climbing gyms around Paris turned into ovens. Company leadership kept them open anyway. Employees describe workdays that felt like a test of endurance. © Piet An investigation published in partnership with Reporterre. Extreme heat can make things look unreal. But on Thursday, June 25, the scene was not a mirage. In the middle of Parc de la Villette, in Paris’s 19th arrondissement, the new climbing gym run by the French climbing federation, the FFME, was packed. Families sat at tables drinking syrup and water. Remote workers tapped away on laptops. Climbers were on the walls everywhere. Drawn in like magnets, they had come for the brand-new air conditioning. Less than two miles away, the picture flipped. At Arkose Pantin, a non-air-conditioned gym just outside Paris in Seine-Saint-Denis, the place was almost empty. A fan pushed hot air around. In the back of the gym, two drenched climbers wondered whether they had another burn in them—a climber’s word for another attempt on a route. The air felt so thick you could see chalk dust hanging in it. “We all knew we were going to get cooked” Issa, an employee at Arkose In a matter of days, the unprecedented heat wave that hit France split the commercial indoor-climbing world into two camps. On one side were air-conditioned gyms, suddenly transformed into cool refuges. On the other were gyms without AC, turned into furnaces that only a few stubborn climbers chose to brave. The climbers, at least, had a choice. The roughly 100 Arkose employees in the Paris region did not. They had to work—at the front desk, in the kitchen, on the climbing floor—in temperatures that sometimes climbed above 104°F. Several of them contacted Vertige Media to describe deteriorating working conditions. All asked to remain anonymous. Heat Traps and Ice Pops At the start of the heat wave, when Issa* began his shift, he already knew the day would be rough. “We work in energy sieves,” he said, using the French term for badly insulated buildings. “In the winter, it’s freezing. We all knew we were going to get cooked.” Issa works at one of the 13 Arkose gyms in the Île-de-France region around Paris. Unlike other large chains such as Climb Up and Climbing District, Arkose’s biggest gyms—Massy, Pantin, Nation, and Montreuil among them—do not have air conditioning. The French company, which now operates 30 gyms across Europe, built many of its climbing walls inside poorly insulated former industrial buildings. “On Tuesday, June 23, when I got to work early in the morning, it was already over 86°F inside the gym,” said Marine*, another Arkose employee in the Paris region. Marine described a company that was unprepared for a heat wave that, according to Santé publique France, the country’s public health agency, was associated with a 30 percent rise in mortality for the week of June 23 to 28. “At the start of the day, my manager told me to take 20 euros from the register and go buy Mister Freeze ice pops,” Marine said. At that point, no Arkose employee had received any official message from company leadership. According to our reporting, however, a meeting between management and employee representatives had taken place on Monday, June 22. The next day, employees saw portable air conditioners, fans, misting devices, and bottles of water arrive. Gym managers adjusted schedules. Often, those same local managers were the ones buying the equipment needed to create “cool-down areas.” Employees said they appreciated the efforts of their direct supervisors. But every one of them wondered why company headquarters had refused to close. According to information gathered by Vertige Media, several competing chains nearby shut down their non-air-conditioned gyms, at least for part of the afternoon. An Arkose franchise in Angers—independent from headquarters—made the same call, announcing before the heat wave that it would close at 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. “if we close every time temperatures go above 95°F, our operations are dead” Samy Carmarzana, CEO of Arkose On the phone, Marine sighed. She could not understand why management had asked her to come to work in temperatures above 95°F. And yet she knew the reason very well. Like most of her colleagues, she had read the same phrase sent to employees in writing: “the need to maintain operations.” “The thing is, that reason doesn’t hold up,” she said. “I was paid to do nothing, so I think they lost more money than they would have by closing.” Everyone told us the same thing: under normal conditions, at Pantin, Massy, Nation, or Montreuil, a good day brings roughly 600 customer visits. At the peak of the heat wave, that number sometimes fell to 70. “The climbers weren’t buying anything except water,” Issa said. “They’d climb for 20 minutes, leave with an embarrassed smile, and all say the same thing: good luck.” Whatever the Cost Contacted by Vertige Media, Arkose CEO and co-founder Samy Camarzana stood by the decision. “At some point, the gyms have to keep running at least a little,” he said by phone. “We can’t just close like that. Or if we do, then find me a generous donor who’s going to make up the difference.” For Camarzana, the issue is existential. In an increasingly gloomy economic climate for the industry, he said, “if we close every time temperatures go above 95°F, our operations are dead.” Despite that economic pressure, Camarzana eventually had to accept that some gyms would close. First came the bouldering area at Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis, which reached 100°F. The local manager decided on his own to shut it down. Then came Massy, where the temperature topped 104°F several times. The climbing area was closed after an order signed by the prefect of Essonne on Friday, June 26, “prohibiting sports practice in non-air-conditioned gyms during the red heat-wave alert.” Laurent* knows Arkose is known for its “365 days a year” opening policy. That did not keep him from getting furious. He works in the kitchen—“where we suffer out of sight”—and knows what it feels like to open an oven when it is already over 104°F outside. So when he learned that Arkose had closed the climbing area in Massy under the prefect’s order but kept the kitchen open, he snapped. “It’s complete nonsense,” he said, angry. That focus on revenue and productivity is what exasperated every employee we contacted. “Why open a gym when there are fewer than 10 customer visits in five hours?” Laurent asked. “Why am I standing around in the kitchen when we’re not serving anyone?” He added: “Management’s priorities are clear: the capitalist obsession comes before the health of their teams.” Camarzana, for his part, said that “overall, we made sure to protect the most vulnerable people.” As proof, he pointed to long discussions with employee representatives and elected CGT union representatives, with whom he said measures were developed jointly. The first step, he said, was “an email asking employees in non-air-conditioned gyms to contact HR if they had experienced symptoms. If so, we said we would contact them to put in place a partial or total adjustment to their working hours.” Temperatures in Arkose facilities in the Île-de-France region, as recorded by employees. Employees did receive that email on Wednesday, June 24, at the height of the heat wave. Issa responded, describing headaches, nausea, and dizziness. That same day, he received a reply from his manager thanking him and confirming that his request had been received. Then nothing. “No one ever followed up with me or offered me anything,” he said. The next day, he went back to work in crushing heat. One employee decided on her own not to come to work at Pantin on Thursday, June 25. The night before, two employees had exercised their right to withdraw from work they considered dangerous. On the phone, Issa paused for a long moment before continuing. “That’s what happens when you put an individual responsibility on employees,” he said. “We’re all friends in our gyms. Management knows that. So if it’s on us to declare that we’re stopping work, they also know we’ll be the ones who have to deal with leaving our coworkers in a mess.” AC, and a Chill Down the Spine Camarzana acknowledged that “not everything was perfect.” Still, he said he does not believe in “magic solutions.” “The solution is adaptation,” he said. Fans, portable AC units, adjusted schedules, breaks, stools at the front desk—under normal conditions, Arkose front-desk staff are not allowed to sit. “This heat wave was unprecedented. It was an empirical crash test,” he said. “We did what we could, and each manager adapted in their own way. At Massy, they were constantly spraying water on the glass wall to create some coolness. In other gyms, teams took their breaks in the air-conditioned beer-keg room.” Camarzana does not want that kind of improvisation to last beyond one summer. Arkose’s goal, he said, is to air-condition its entire gym network by next summer. He puts the cost at several hundred thousand euros, an investment he considers necessary if he does not want his staff suffocating again. “Putting productivity ahead of employee health is not the image I had of climbing” Marine, an employee at Arkose Until then, employees may have to endure one, two, or even three more heat waves this summer. For Marine, Laurent, Issa, and others, the strain is already physical, but it is also mental. Marine described feeling “a mix of anger and disappointment.” “Putting productivity ahead of employee health is not the image I had of climbing,” she said. “Now, when I’m asked to embody the values of the ‘Arkose Family,’ it really gets under my skin.” She pointed to what she called “the nerve of headquarters,” which, “instead of sending us messages of support, sends reminders telling us not to wear tank tops while working.” Issa is feeling something else. “Honestly, I’m scared,” he said. “For my physical safety, but most of all because I’m afraid that, once again, my company won’t listen to me or support me.” He described himself as part of a generation “extremely anxious about climate change.” “The people who work here are very young, and they’re all scared when they think about the future,” he said. “That lack of consideration adds to our feeling of insecurity.” Then he added: “For most of us, this is still just a job that pays the bills. We’re not going to wreck our health for it.” *Names have been changed.

Climbing and trekking have put some Moroccan valleys on the global adventure map. But what happens when mountains where people actually live become the backdrop for athletes coming in from somewhere else? Through his work on what he calls Morocco’s “sporting mountain,” anthropologist Thomas Fouquet examines the blind spots of an outdoor culture that often sees itself as neutral, even as it moves through a much longer history. Toubkal (cc) Othman Alghanmi / Unsplash People think they are coming for the rock. For sun while Europe shivers. For big red walls, high valleys, villages at the base of the routes, and the promise of an adventure that still feels available—less built-out, less crowded, less processed than the Alps. Taghia, Todgha, Chefchaouen, Imlil: for many climbers and trekkers, those names already sound obvious. But a cliff is never just a cliff. In an article published in the Revue internationale des études du développement, titled “La montagne-sportive au Maroc : entre confiscation, préservation et marchandisation,” Thomas Fouquet, an anthropologist and research fellow at France’s CNRS, asks us to look at what outdoor culture often prefers to leave outside the frame: colonial history, social inequality, tourist narratives, money flows, gear flows, and the power dynamics hidden behind the call of wide-open spaces. Imported Mountains The paradox is simple. Morocco’s mountains are there. Visible, inhabited, massive. And yet the sports now practiced in them have long been shaped by models imported from elsewhere. The story begins under the French protectorate. France established its protectorate over Morocco in 1912. Ten years later, the Club Alpin Français opened its High Atlas section. In 1923, the club held its annual congress in Marrakech, with Marshal Lyautey as honorary president. Moroccan mountain sport was born, then, into a strange rope team: European actors bolting routes, building the first refuges, training guides, and projecting onto the Atlas an Alpine imagination imported from Europe. The wall was Moroccan, but for a long time the story wrapped around it spoke French: alpinism, exploration, soft conquest, and the vertical postcard. In an interview with Vertige Media, Fouquet sums up that history plainly: “In the eyes of Moroccans, mountain sports are a kind of foreign space at home.” The mountains are national by geography, but partly foreign in their codes, institutions, stories, and uses. Here, the word “postcolonial” is not a slogan. It describes what is visible on the ground. “Mountain sports were introduced and developed in Morocco through colonization,” the researcher says. That legacy still leaves marks. Many routes are still equipped by Europeans, either living in Morocco or passing through. Some clubs remain shaped by codes inherited from that history, while Moroccan practitioners often come from privileged urban backgrounds. Things are shifting, though. Fouquet now sees a real surge of interest in climbing among young Moroccan city-dwellers. In Rabat and Casablanca, climbing sections are full. Some have even had to turn people away. It would be tempting to call that democratization. Fouquet is more cautious: “There is mass participation, but there is no democratization of climbing.” The profile remains fairly narrow: young people from urban middle- and upper-class backgrounds, often with international experience, studies abroad, or time spent in Europe. Many discover climbing elsewhere before realizing it exists at home. As if the detour through another country suddenly made their own visible. “The Moroccan population is not targeted by the outdoor market. But Moroccan territories are targeted by outdoor practices” Thomas Fouquet, anthropologist and research fellow at the CNRS In his article, Fouquet quotes a 33-year-old Moroccan climber who began climbing during secondary school at a French lycée in Casablanca. For him, climbing first meant plastic holds on a concrete wall, inside a French school setting. Then came the discovery of local rock. His reaction: “Oh yeah, we Moroccans can climb too, we actually have this here [laughs].” Sometimes it takes a social or geographic detour to realize your country is not just a destination for other people. The divide is material, too. In Morocco, the climbing market remains tiny. “Today, there is no equivalent of a Vieux Campeur,” Fouquet says, referring to the French outdoor retail chain. Climbing shoes, chalk, tape, resoling: everything quickly becomes a matter of suitcases and shared workarounds. “I share my chalk and tape all the time,” the researcher says. Then he adds: “The Moroccan population is not targeted by the outdoor market. But Moroccan territories are targeted by outdoor practices.” Fake Authenticity Moroccan valleys attract visitors because they seem to offer what many Europeans believe they have lost at home: mountains that feel rawer, less developed, less crowded, less transformed. But authenticity often has a trapdoor. What a traveler sees as charm—remoteness, the absence of heavy infrastructure, the feeling of being outside time—can be lived locally as a very concrete constraint: inadequate roads, limited access to health care, school, work, or electricity. In his article, Fouquet quotes geographer David Goeury: “Isolation, a constraint at the national scale, could then be considered a resource at the global scale.” In plain terms, what holds a place back can become its best selling point. Fouquet describes a deep disconnect, where “the aspirations and desires of some are strongly disconnected from those of others.” The trekker wants an untouched village, without too many power lines in the picture. The person who lives there just wants light. A line from work on the Aït Bouguemez valley, quoted in the article, captures the bind: “For tourists to come, heritage must remain, but for inhabitants to remain, heritage must evolve.” In Imlil, the last village before Toubkal—Morocco’s highest peak, at 13,671 feet—this misunderstanding takes shape. Fouquet calls it an “outdoor bazaar”: guides, lodging, secondhand gear, old ice axes, beat-up skis, the commerce of adventure and the economy of making do. A Chamonix of the Atlas, but without the polished finish of an Alpine resort. “It is a kind of hypertrophy of consumerist and capitalist logic taking hold of the mountains in Morocco, but in successive layers,” he says. Climbing adds an even more sensitive layer. Hiking passes through. Climbing changes things. It drills into the rock, installs bolts—the fixed metal protection climbers clip into—establishes routes, names them, maps the walls. It does not simply move through a landscape. It leaves its own signs behind. Fouquet is not trying to turn foreign route developers into easy villains. Many, he notes, are deeply attached to Morocco, know the places well, and build sincere relationships with local residents. Still, the act carries weight. “Appropriating that portion of territory and naming it has something symbolically significant about it, given the country’s history and the foreign presence within it,” he says. “You come, you practice, you consume, you leave” Thomas Fouquet, anthropologist and research fellow at the CNRS The question quickly becomes concrete: Who decides that a cliff becomes a climbing area? Who bolts it, names it, maintains it? And who remains a spectator when a place where people live gets reclassified as a “spot”? In recent months, young Moroccan climbers from the CAF in Casablanca have spoken out against what they see as the persistence of a colonial mindset in certain practices. What they are criticizing is less the existence of climbing itself than the way places are consumed. Fouquet sums up that logic sharply: “You come, you practice, you consume, you leave.” Against that, another way of inhabiting the sport is beginning to take shape—one more attentive to places and to the people who live there. The anthropologist calls it “politics from below”: paying attention to how you arrive in a village, to the name you give a route, to what the activity leaves behind, not only to what it lets you tick off in your send log—a climber’s personal list of completed routes. The Kaizen Effect Layered onto that long history is the accelerator of social media. YouTube, Instagram, and stories of personal transformation are making the mountains more visible to young urban Moroccans. That can be a valuable new entry point. But sometimes it opens first onto the image, before it opens onto the culture of the place. Fouquet tells the story of a mountain guide who came across young people from Marrakech trying to climb Toubkal in winter, wearing jeans and sneakers, after seeing videos online. “Young Moroccans are interested in the mountains. But there is this huge gap between the images being produced and the concrete knowledge people actually have,” he says. The summit becomes a story backdrop before it is understood as an environment. People come looking for an image of themselves before they have learned the cold, altitude, snow, slowness, and risk. But the story does not end with dispossession by image. In Taghia, young local residents have become excellent climbers. Fouquet describes them as “a kind of bridge between this inhabited mountain and this sporting mountain.” Maybe that is where part of the future lies: in the ability of Moroccan practitioners to produce their own stories, their own images, their own ways of living with the cliffs. Morocco is not some exotic exception. That is part of what makes the research useful: it looks at a specific case that speaks to a question running through all of contemporary outdoor culture. “This is not about saying there is something highly specific to Morocco. These are Moroccan forms of a very global question,” Fouquet says. How do you move through a natural space without consuming it like a disposable product? And how do you think about wild places without forgetting that they are already inhabited, named, worked, and contested? Fouquet is not calling for a boycott of the Atlas. He rejects the comfortable posture of the judge. “My question is not to criticize the fact that foreigners come climb in Morocco, but rather how they do it, with what ethics, what mindset.” Maybe it all comes down to one sentence, offered at the end of our conversation: “It is more a problem of pace than distance.” The modern trap is not going far. It is arriving too fast. Seeing the cliff before the village, the line before the place, the wild adventure before the history. Thomas Fouquet’s study reminds us of something outdoor culture sometimes prefers to forget: wide-open spaces are never empty. Even in silence, cliffs are always saying something. To read Thomas Fouquet’s full work: “La montagne-sportive au Maroc : entre confiscation, préservation et marchandisation,” published in the Revue internationale des études du développement.

President of the Palestine Climbing Association, recognized by World Climbing as a national federation in 2024, Hiba Shaheen lives and climbs in Palestine. Between crags she says have been taken over under Israeli occupation, daily checkpoints, and a federation motion that never made it to a vote, she speaks for the first time about the reality facing Palestinian climbers under occupation — and the institutional fight she is leading to put them on the international stage. A long interview from Ramallah. Members and supporters of the Palestine Climbing Association © Asia Zughaiar Vertige Media: Just before this interview, we heard that a Palestinian climber had just been attacked by an Israeli settler. Can you tell us what happened? Hiba Shaheen: It happened yesterday, June 9, in a village north of Ramallah. One of our climbers was there with friends. They weren’t at a climbing crag — an outdoor climbing area — they were setting up a hammock, which is why they had climbing gear with them. A settler came and started attacking them. They managed to run away and weren’t seriously hurt because they escaped quickly. But when they came back, all their belongings were gone: phones, passports, climbing gear, everything. Vertige Media: What are the current living conditions like for Palestinian climbers? Hiba Shaheen: What I just described is pretty typical. It is not the first time a Palestinian climber has been attacked. About a month ago, another member of ours was at home in Hizma, a village near Ramallah, when the Israeli military invaded the neighborhood. They were going into houses at random, searching them, detaining people, handcuffing them, blindfolding them. People from the village could be held for an entire day with their hands tied behind their backs and their eyes covered. These are not isolated stories. This is our reality. Today, no Palestinian climber is safe, anywhere, at any time. “Even when you go climbing outside: if the military shows up and finds a knife in your bag, you can be arrested or shot” Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation Vertige Media: How would you explain the situation? Hiba Shaheen: It is not that complicated: someone wants to come to your land and colonize it, and your mere presence becomes a problem. Settlers say it openly: “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” They want all Palestinians to leave. And right now, they have a green light, with full support from the Israeli government, the police, the military. A settler can attack, hurt, even kill someone, and never be held accountable. Even when you go climbing outside: if the military shows up and finds a knife in your bag, you can be arrested or shot. They can simply say, “They posed a threat. They had a knife.” There is no real accountability. No one protects us. Vertige Media: In that context, where do you find the motivation to keep climbing? Hiba Shaheen: When you have been climbing for years, it becomes part of who you are. You cannot really fight the urge to put your hands on rock. For me, the wall is still the only place where I feel truly free. On the wall, you feel connected to the rock, to the land. You move freely. No one tells you what your next move should be. And at the same time, you know it could all stop at any moment. You know that the crag you are climbing today may be a place you never get to climb again. In a strange way, that is one of the things that pushes me to climb even more: to enjoy what we still have, for as long as we can. Vertige Media: In practical terms, how do movement restrictions affect your climbing? Hiba Shaheen: Imagine every village has two entrances. Multiply that by a thousand villages, and you have 2,000 gates to get through. My hometown has three gates. Two are completely closed. The third has a color system: if it is yellow, it opens sometimes. If it is orange, it never opens. After a certain hour, you cannot drive back into your own town. Because of these movement restrictions, our climbing community has never really been able to grow beyond Ramallah. To go to Nablus, where we have a relatively safe crag, you have to cross at least three checkpoints. And depending on your luck that day, one of them will be closed, or they will be searching every car. You can spend one or two hours waiting in line. It is a constant logistics problem built around uncertainty. Vertige Media: Out of roughly a dozen crags identified in Palestine, you now have access to only one. How has the occupation gradually taken those sites away? Hiba Shaheen: There are several categories. First, there are crags in areas under Israeli control where the main access route goes through a settlement. Israelis can drive through the settlement and be at the crag in five minutes. Palestinians have to come from another village, walk around the settlement for nearly 40 minutes, and then go through a military and security check at the entrance. If you pass, you climb. If you don’t, you are sent back. It can be for any reason — even something your brother did, not you. “For me, the wall is still the only place where I feel truly free. On the wall, you feel connected to the rock, to the land. You move freely. No one tells you what your next move should be. And at the same time, you know it could all stop at any moment. You know that the crag you are climbing today may be a place you never get to climb again. In a strange way, that is one of the things that pushes me to climb even more: to enjoy what we still have, for as long as we can” Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation Then there are crags near settlements. Settlement security can show up within minutes and tell you that you are not allowed to be there. Sometimes you barely have time to park before you are told to leave. And then there is the most serious category: stolen crags. These are crags that were bolted — equipped with fixed protection — by Palestinian climbers, sometimes with help from international partners, on Palestinian land, for Palestinians. Then another federation came in, listed those crags in its own guidebook, renamed the routes, and reclassified the land as a military zone. Now they are off-limits to Palestinians, but Israelis can climb there. I do not think this has ever happened anywhere else in the world: a national federation taking routes equipped by another climbing community, changing their names, putting them in its own guidebook — without having bolted them in the first place. Our most beautiful crag, Yabrud — the one you see in Andrew Bisharat’s documentary Resistance Climbing — is now completely inaccessible. A settler established an outpost there. Since then, every time our climbers have gone, military jeeps have shown up. The last time, they were told: “Leave, or you will be in the crossfire.” Vertige Media: You say crags have been “stolen.” What exactly is the role of the Israeli federation, the ILCA, in this? Hiba Shaheen: First, we have to go back to a basic point. Under the Oslo Accords, all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal. The West Bank belongs to Palestinians. And yet the ILCA is bolting crags and organizing climbing activities in those settlements, even though it should not be operating in the West Bank. And it does not hide this. The federation openly runs military training for Israeli soldiers — rappelling, knots, climbing techniques. So it is directly linked to, and complicit in, military operations. Vertige Media: Activist sources say the logos of the IFSC — the former name of World Climbing — and the UIAA appear on Israeli guidebooks for crags in the occupied West Bank. Can you confirm that? Hiba Shaheen: Yes, I can confirm it. I saw it on the Israeli Climbing Association website. Their guidebook carries the IFSC logo. I do not know whether that means formal approval or whether it was simply overlooked. I cannot say with certainty that the IFSC approved it. But if we are telling them about this, they have to open an investigation. Vertige Media: What did you formally ask World Climbing to do, and how did the organization respond? Hiba Shaheen: We submitted a formal letter requesting the suspension of the Israeli federation, with evidence of violations of IOC and World Climbing statutes — including the unequal access to training facilities imposed on Palestinians. For us, crags are training facilities. We do not have a proper climbing gym. We documented the fact that our athletes were stuck at the border for three days while trying to travel to a competition, and that a two-week bridge closure prevented us from attending another event. All of that was documented and sent. Our letter did not even make it into the folder of motions submitted for a vote. The response we received was that our letter did not establish the complicity of the Israel Climbing Association, only the actions of the Israeli state. And the state, they said, did not fit the criteria. Vertige Media: What do you make of that? Hiba Shaheen: When they suspended Russia, no one had to prove that the Russian federation was complicit. They simply suspended it. With Israel, we are being asked to meet an impossible standard of proof. It is a double standard. Our motion was co-signed by Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Spain also submitted one, under pressure from Climbers for Palestine, but it was more cautious: it called for discussion and investigation rather than a direct suspension. Only the Spanish motion was put to a vote. “A full suspension of Israel from all World Climbing activities — competitions and meetings included” Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation Vertige Media: An extraordinary General Assembly is scheduled for July 2026 to discuss “geopolitical issues.” What do you know about it? Hiba Shaheen: Honestly, not much more than what has been made public. I do not know exactly what will be put to a vote, or in what form. What I know is that the idea came up as a way to deal with all the pending motions — ours, the ones about Russia and Belarus, and others. We were prepared to bring our motion directly to the World Climbing General Assembly last February, which was supposed to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But then Israel and the United States struck Iran. In the chaos that followed, World Climbing announced that the in-person General Assembly was canceled and said that only statutory items would be handled. The session where votes could happen was postponed. Hiba Shaheen during a visit to France © Pascal Étienne Vertige Media: What exactly are you asking World Climbing to do? Hiba Shaheen: A full suspension of Israel from all World Climbing activities — competitions and meetings included. Competing under a neutral flag, as was done with Russia, does not work in Israel’s case. Every athlete would have to prove neutrality. But for Israeli athletes, that is impossible. All of their athletes of service age are listed in the reserves. That is a legal obligation. An athlete who was on active duty in Gaza six months before an international competition cannot be neutral. We also stated the criteria for lifting the suspension: Palestinians must have free access to our crags, we must be able to travel between our cities, and we must be able to travel to competitions. Right now, none of those conditions is met. Vertige Media: Can World Climbing actually do anything? Hiba Shaheen: Yes. The power of World Climbing is its General Assembly. If member federations submit motions, World Climbing has to review them and act. The federations have the power. If World Climbing does not act on its own, its General Assembly can force it to. There is also a shared interest. World Climbing wants to grow the sport worldwide and increase international participation. That is necessary if climbing wants to stay in the Olympic program. We asked World Climbing to help us build a climbing gym. The response we received was that they do not have a direct budget for that. They pointed us toward Olympic Solidarity funding, which has to go through our National Olympic Committee. When we went there, we were told: “Climbing is just you. How many climbers are you — 60, 100? It is not interesting for us. We will give the money to football, basketball, volleyball.” Vertige Media: Do you currently have athletes capable of representing Palestine internationally? Hiba Shaheen: Yes. And in all of this, there are still some positive signs. Tawfiq Najada, from the village of Ein Qiniya, just sent his second 5.13b — the American equivalent of 8a — at Iraq al-Dub in Jordan. That matters because other climbers have climbed it too, so the grade is confirmed. He had climbed one in Palestine before, but because no one else had graded it, we were not fully certain it was 8a. We founded the PCA in 2019, with nine other climbers. Climbing had just become an Olympic sport, and the sport was starting to grow in Palestine on a small scale. We had a small community, a small gym, and a dream of one day seeing Palestinian climbers at the Olympics. To get there, we had to build the sport locally and gain official representation so we could enter international institutions. That has been done since 2024. Today, we have around 60 members, including six active competitors. “Even insurance companies have refused to cover female climbers because they assessed the risk as too high. That is one of the things that weighs on me the most. Because I know what climbing feels like, and I want other women in my community and my country to experience it too” Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation But to reach the next level, we do not have enough infrastructure. Our only gym, Wadi Climbing in Ramallah, is a bouldering gym — a gym for shorter climbs above padded floors. It does not have the hold styles used in modern competitions. The walls are only three meters high; competition walls are four and a half meters. We do not have a speed wall at all. And on the only outdoor crag we still have access to, we cannot guarantee safety. That makes everything much harder, especially for women. Vertige Media: Why are women even more exposed? Hiba Shaheen: Because we are a conservative culture, and families are very protective of their daughters. If a man is arrested, people feel he may be able to manage. If it is a woman, the fear is very different — the risk of sexual assault, arbitrary detention, everything that can happen. Even insurance companies have refused to cover female climbers because they assessed the risk as too high. That is one of the things that weighs on me the most. Because I know what climbing feels like, and I want other women in my community and my country to experience it too. The Ein Qinya site, located near a Palestinian village in the West Bank © Hiba Shaheen Vertige Media: A coach from the Lebanese climbing federation reportedly told you that armed security teams were accompanying the Israeli delegation at international competitions. What do you know about that? Hiba Shaheen: I can confirm it. It happened in Madrid, and then in Prague. At those competitions, the Israeli climbers had armed security teams in areas reserved for athletes and coaches. They were the only ones with armed security there. As a Palestinian, I am not surprised. I see how they militarize every part of their presence. But at a sports competition on European soil, there is no reason to be surrounded by guns. Why are other federations not reacting? Why does Israel feel it needs that level of protection? Vertige Media: Israeli climbers were booed during the Climbing World Cup stop in Madrid. Are they personally responsible for the actions of their state? Hiba Shaheen: Take Ayala Kerem, a World Cup finalist and the 2024 European vice-champion. She is sponsored by Shikun & Binui, an Israeli construction company known for its role in building illegal settlements in the West Bank. This is documented. Through that sponsorship, she is directly endorsing the colonization of Palestine. That is not a coincidence. “As long as Palestinian climbers do not have access to the same rights, the same crags, the same ability to travel and compete, allowing Israeli athletes to climb freely on the international stage means validating an unjust system” Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation Vertige Media: Is it fair to exclude them from competitions? Hiba Shaheen: Yes. As long as Palestinian climbers do not have access to the same rights, the same crags, the same ability to travel and compete, allowing Israeli athletes to climb freely on the international stage means validating an unjust system. Vertige Media: What is your relationship with the international collective Climbers for Palestine? Hiba Shaheen: I am very grateful to them. I am in regular contact with most of them — about once a month. I keep them updated on what is happening here. They are more courageous than many federations and governments. I hope the movement keeps growing.

On July 23, national climbing federations from around the world will meet for an unprecedented vote: whether to suspend Israel, Russia, and Belarus from World Climbing. Under pressure from a whistleblower and an international advocacy group, the Executive Board agreed to call a special General Assembly. For the first time, here is the story behind a vote that could lead to a historic decision. At the World Cup event in Madrid in May 2026 © Alberto Astudillo García Like the rest of Europe, Spain was sweltering in the summer of 2025. But in the heavy heat of her apartment in Tarragona, Jimena Villar-de-Onis finally had a little free time. A trained lawyer, the Swiss climber had always moved between a thousand projects at once. This time, the path was clear: she went down an internet rabbit hole. Jimena was looking for information on the subjects that fascinate her most: international law and sport. And that day, while clicking through sources about the situation at climbing cliffs in the West Bank, she was stunned. Jimena Villar-de-Onis first learned that Israel’s national climbing federation, ILCA, was promoting—and sometimes even renaming—climbing areas in occupied Palestinian territories. Link by link, she read that Israel’s relentless settlement expansion, pursued at a frantic pace since it began on 7 October 2023, also extended to the climbing cliffs of the West Bank. Two years later, while on a climbing trip in Switzerland, the young Oxford University researcher kept thinking about it between routes. Around that time, she was in frequent contact with Luisa Gieric, a young Spanish student. After the shock came the decision to act together. “We had spent hundreds of hours on this,” Jimena Villar-de-Onis says over the phone, looking back. “I tried to publish an article, but nobody wanted it, so we put everything on a website and an Instagram account.” Eighteen months later, the information gathered by the two climbers has become part of the foundation for what could become a historic decision in the climbing world. On July 23, 2026, dozens of national climbing federations will vote at a special General Assembly of World Climbing, the sport’s international federation. The meeting will include three separate votes: whether to suspend the Belarusian, Russian, and Israeli federations. The evidence gathered by Jimena Villar-de-Onis helped a broader movement build toward that moment. The Swiss climber has thrown herself into it completely through Climbers for Palestine, the group that has put the most pressure on World Climbing so far. The Battle of the Motions March 2022. Russia’s army invades Ukraine. Two weeks later, in Salt Lake City, the IFSC—the former name of the international climbing federation—holds its annual General Assembly. Emotions are running high, and representatives from dozens of federations are facing a question sport rarely wants to answer: what do you do when a member country starts a war? With the invasion dominating the news, a majority of federations vote to suspend Russia and Belarus, and to automatically exclude their athletes from international competition. “It is a mistake. Sport should not take a position on one conflict, because if you start with one, you have to do it for all of them” Marco Scolaris, president of World Climbing, on the suspension of the Russian and Belarusian federations following the war in Ukraine. Marco Scolaris, the president of World Climbing, said it plainly a few months ago on Climbing Radio: “It is a mistake. Sport should not take a position on one conflict, because if you start with one, you have to do it for all of them.” In his view, the Court of Arbitration for Sport proved him right. When the International Ski Federation voted in 2025 to fully exclude Russian athletes, CAS overturned the decision: athletes could not be barred outright, only required to compete as neutrals. But for Jimena Villar-de-Onis, that framing is not quite right. “In principle, Marco Scolaris is right. But on the substance, nobody has ever asked for Israeli, Russian, or Belarusian athletes to be fully excluded,” she explains. “We are arguing for suspension. That is different. And if athletes want to compete, they can do so under a neutral flag.” That is more or less what the federation would later do. In 2025, World Climbing adopted a “neutrality policy”: Russian and Belarusian athletes would compete without flags, national colors, or anthems. The measure held until February 2026, when World Climbing’s Executive Board suddenly lifted the suspension of the Russian and Belarusian federations. In practice, Russia and Belarus were full members again. Ukraine immediately protested and submitted a motion. That is where things got tangled. At the same time, Jimena Villar-de-Onis and Climbers for Palestine were moving on a different track. Their argument was not based on Israel’s war. Their case was narrower, and more technical. They argue that ILCA is violating its own statutory obligations as a member of World Climbing. In late 2025, Climbers for Palestine published an evidence report documenting ILCA’s activities: confiscated climbing areas in the West Bank, the reframing of Palestinian cliffs and first ascents, and financial and institutional ties with the Israeli military and companies operating in settlements. The report argues that these activities have helped effectively exclude Palestinian climbers from their own cliffs by obstructing their freedom of movement, as the president of the Palestine Climbing Association explained to us in an interview. Step by step, Climbers for Palestine organized internationally. The group now has pressure groups in several European countries. In Spain and Italy, its members succeeded in getting their national federations to adopt two motions. Along with Ukraine’s motion, World Climbing suddenly had three texts on its desk. Three texts that forced it to open a debate on Israel’s participation in climbing competitions. The issue was supposed to be addressed at its 2026 General Assembly in Riyadh. Then another war disrupted everything. Pressure, Secrecy, and the Fine Print In April 2026, the United States and Israel began bombing Iran. The Middle East had become a war zone. World Climbing canceled its trip to Saudi Arabia and moved the General Assembly online. At the same time, the federation announced that sensitive issues would not be discussed. Jimena Villar-de-Onis was furious. With little time left, the researcher decided to do everything she could to increase pressure on national federations and on World Climbing itself. Thanks to that mobilization, national climbing federations were asked to vote on whether to hold a special World Climbing General Assembly on “geopolitical questions.” On April 23, the proposal passed with 78.69 percent of the vote. It was unquestionably a win for Climbers for Palestine. Many people celebrated. Jimena stayed calm. Because once she dug into the details, she knew it would not be that simple. “Any decision taken under this agenda item will constitute a recommendation to the Executive Board regarding the suspension of a National Federation” A statement set forth in black and white in an official World Climbing document. The July 23 vote will not be binding. To find that out, you have to dig through World Climbing’s official website. Buried there, the document for the upcoming special General Assembly is clear. In the original English, it says: “Any decision taken under this agenda item will constitute a recommendation to the Executive Board regarding the suspension of a National Federation.” In other words, the national federations can vote yes on suspending Belarus, Russia, and Israel, and the Executive Board can still do nothing. Jimena Villar-de-Onis discovered this while combing through the statutes and pushed World Climbing to acknowledge it. The international federation eventually published the document, without announcing it. According to Climbers for Palestine, the group had to threaten to release the information itself in order to force that clarification. So there it is: what looks like a democratic process includes an escape clause. The Executive Board still holds the power. Copy of the official World Climbing document On July 23, federations will vote anonymously. The order of the vote is already known: alphabetical (by federation names), with Belarus first, Russia second, and Israel last. For Jimena Villar-de-Onis, that is not incidental. It could influence the result, as could the very simple wording of the vote: “Vote to recommend to the Executive Board the suspension of [National Federation Name].” As a trained lawyer, she knows the fine print matters. For Belarus and Russia, the situation has already been decided by the Executive Board, which lifted their suspensions in February. A vote recommending suspension would be a direct rebuke to the Executive Board. But according to Jimena Villar-de-Onis, many Eastern European federations support suspension. That creates a tension: can a federation vote no on Russia and yes on Israel without contradicting itself? And what about the reverse? Marco Scolaris himself acknowledged in the Climbing Radio podcast that differential treatment “has become a form of violence against the Palestinian people.” For Israel, the logic is different from 2022. World Climbing is not being asked to take a position on a conflict between states. It is being asked to apply its own statutes to a member federation whose documented activities, according to Climbers for Palestine, constitute violations of international law. “It can pass” Jimena Villar-de-Onis, a member of Climbers for Palestine. A Disrupted World Cup in Chamonix According to our information, around 60 to 70 federations are expected to take part. A suspension recommendation requires a simple majority. But the quality of that majority will matter as much as the raw result. If federations vote overwhelmingly for all three suspensions and the Executive Board follows their lead, it would set a historic precedent. For the first time in an Olympic sport, a federation would be suspended for documented violations of international law. Israeli athletes would then have to compete under a neutral flag during qualification for Los Angeles 2028, less than a year before the cycle begins. If the vote is clear but the Executive Board refuses to act, a legitimacy crisis begins, and Marco Scolaris will have to explain why a majority of member federations has no real power. If the margins are narrow and the results split, the Executive Board will have everything it needs to justify inaction. Summer will pass, and the show will move on. Jimena Villar-de-Onis and Luisa Gieric at a demonstration in Madrid © Courtesy of Jimena Villar-de-Onis For Jimena Villar-de-Onis, a historic precedent is still possible. “It can pass,” she says confidently over the phone. In the meantime, Climbers for Palestine has launched a major campaign urging members of national federations to write to their federations and convince them to vote for Israel’s suspension. Tomorrow, just before the Climbing World Cup stop in Chamonix, a demonstration in support of the Palestinian people is planned. The entire Executive Board will be there. It will be hard to look away.