LGBTQ+ Climbing: Australia’s Federation Introduces a Groundbreaking Inclusive Category

As the Olympic era pushes sports federations to pour more of their money and attention into elite performance, Sport Climbing Australia is trying to widen the frame. By creating an inclusive category at the highest level of its national competitions, the Australian federation wants to help its athletes chase the Games while also making room for climbers left out by the sport’s binary model. It is a delicate balance, still very much a work in progress. But Australia is choosing it.

© Climbing QTS

Climbing’s arrival in the Olympics has shifted the sport’s center of gravity. In many federations, calendars, budgets, and priorities are being rebuilt around high performance. In Australia, though, the federation is testing a different answer: refusing to pit medal hopes against broader access to competition walls.

Same Wall, Same Standard

In many sports, gender categories arrive loaded with tension, suspicion, and hard lines. The conversation often starts at the top: international rules, eligibility criteria, Olympic policies, debates over fairness, and the protection of women’s categories. In Australia, Sport Climbing Australia has chosen a different entry point: the climbers who, until now, have not really had a place in the competitive pathway.

“Our ambition is to have more Australians climbing more often, in whatever way makes them happy”

Rebecca Hamilton, CEO of Sport Climbing Australia

In a recent ABC News story, several young climbers described the gap between the welcome they found in LGBTQIA+ climbing spaces and the much harsher experience of competitions. Luce, a nonbinary climber, said they had felt forced to choose between being “a queer climber” and “a competition climber,” as if they could not be both. Phoebe, a trans woman, described being misgendered at competitions.

That is the context in which ClimbingQTs, an LGBTQIA+ advocacy group within Australia’s climbing community, pushed Sport Climbing Australia to act. The organization, which brings climbers together every month in gyms across the country, had spent months calling for better recognition of trans, nonbinary, and queer climbers in competitive pathways. The Australian federation is now working on an inclusive category, open to climbers who do not want to, or cannot, enter the binary men’s and women’s categories.

© Climbing QTS

Rebecca “Beck” Hamilton has led Sport Climbing Australia for the past year. She did not come out of climbing. In fact, she says she has only climbed once, and she sees that distance as an asset. “I do like to keep a bit of independence from it,” she says, “because that can be a real strength as a CEO..” Her job, she tells us, is not only to think about the athletes who might reach the Games. It is also to understand “the people who keep our sport going every day.”

Sport Climbing Australia is trying to hold two goals at once: build international-level performance and create a broader, more accessible, more sustainable sport. “Our ambition is to have more Australians climbing more often, in whatever way makes them happy,” Hamilton says.

For the federation, the challenge is to make sure the inclusive category does not become a side room, a symbolic add-on next to the “real” competition. Hamilton is clear on this point: the category has to be structured, easy to understand, and genuinely competitive.

“I do think there still need to be rules,” she says. “Especially at an elite level, we had to define what category one looked like.” The model under discussion is built around levels: category one for athletes climbing at an elite standard, with lower levels potentially added later for regional, local, or gym-based competitions. At national championships, only category one would be offered.

“In category one, you are essentially climbing at an elite level,” Hamilton says. “You are climbing on the same problems as our Olympians at our national championships.”

That point matters. Boulder problems are the short, ropeless climbs used in bouldering competitions, and for Hamilton, using the same problems changes the nature of the project. The point is not to adjust the wall for a category seen as different. It is to open access to the same athletic standard.

“The message I heard very clearly from talking with the team,” she says, “is that they actually don’t want anything to change on the wall at all. They want those elite competition opportunities.”

Still, the question is practical. In a competition where boulder problems are usually split between men’s and women’s categories, which problems will athletes in the inclusive category climb? Hamilton does not pretend to have all the answers yet.

“Will they climb on the male or the female boulder? … I’m actually not sure.” That choice, she says, will have to be built with the people most directly affected, as the federation gets a better understanding of participants’ profiles and levels. She even floats one possible solution: “Just draw it out of a hat,” she says. “Don’t make it a thing.”

© Climbing QTS

That pragmatism runs through her thinking. The Australian federation has already launched an open category for disabled climbers who do not fit existing Paralympic classifications. At a recent National Cup, two athletes took part. “And two athletes is enough,” Hamilton says. “That’s two more athletes than we had before.”

Not Choosing Between the Elite and the Grassroots

Another distinctive part of the Australian model is how the country defines and funds the mission of its sports federations. “Most climbing federations today seem to have producing Olympians and Paralympians as their main mission,” Hamilton says. “We are no different in that respect. But in Australia, we have two very separate funding streams.” One side is dedicated to performance: Win Well. The other, Play Well, is focused on access to sport. “And that is where the inclusive category really makes sense,” she says.

« La stratégie Play Well en Australie dit que chacun a une place dans le sport »

Rebecca Hamilton, CEO of Sport Climbing Australia

That structure allows Sport Climbing Australia to avoid setting elite climbing against the grassroots. The federation wants to support commercial climbing gyms, which play a central role in the growth of Australian climbing, while also working on coach education, adaptive climbing, equipment, safety, youth pathways, and masters categories.

In that framework, the inclusive category is not meant to be a one-off gesture. It is one piece of a larger plan. “The Play Well strategy in Australia says everyone has a place in sport,” Hamilton says. “I love that idea. You may not be a competitor. You may come climbing once a week for the social connection. You may be an official, a volunteer, a coach. But everyone has a place in sport.”

Local Bet, Global Rules

There is one major limit: Sport Climbing Australia is not operating in a rule-free world. National competitions can also serve as selection events for Australian teams, which then compete on international, Olympic, and Paralympic circuits. In those pathways, the federation will have to apply international rules.

« Nous voulons être un laboratoire »

Rebecca Hamilton, CEO de Sport Climbing Australia

Beck Hamilton le dit clairement : certaines compétitions permettront à des personnes trans de s’inscrire dans la catégorie correspondant à leur genre. Mais dès lors qu’un événement devient une porte d’entrée vers les équipes nationales et les Jeux, une ligne réglementaire s’impose. « Je ne fixe pas ces règles, je les applique », résume-t-elle.

Hamilton says this plainly. Some competitions will allow trans people to enter the category that matches their gender. But once an event becomes a gateway to national teams and the Games, the international rulebook takes over. “I don’t make those rules,” she says. “I merely enforce them.” That is also why the inclusive category does not solve everything. For some trans women, it may leave the central question untouched: the ability to compete in the women’s category. ABC News cited one climber who welcomed the emergence of an inclusive category, but would still prefer to compete in a women’s event.

Australia’s project, then, opens another route. It does not, by itself, reopen the door to the women’s Olympic pathway.

The goal is not to replace the Olympic model with another one. It is to keep that model from taking up all the space. Alongside Olympic men’s and women’s categories, and alongside Paralympic categories based on classification, Sport Climbing Australia wants to add an inclusive pathway that is structured, competitive, and fully owned. Looking further ahead, Hamilton says Australia would like to host the World Championships before the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. In that scenario, she imagines the Olympic and Paralympic pathways having their World Championships first, followed by an inclusive World Championships “on the same walls.”

She knows the experiment will be watched. “Absolutely, we want to be a laboratory,” she says.

She has already heard from people in other Australian sports facing the same questions, but unsure how to approach them. For Hamilton, the method is simple: find the people affected, listen to them, build with them, then test.

Sport Climbing Australia does not have all the answers yet. But its proposal comes down to a line Hamilton repeats like a guiding principle. “The walls don’t discriminate,” she says. “The walls are the walls. When you walk into a climbing gym and you go on the wall, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, or anything in between.”