“We’re More Like FIFA Now”: 8 Federations Protest World Climbing’s Governance
- Matthieu Amaré
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
An unprecedented protest movement is shaking World Climbing. Led by Portugal and Latvia, national federations have filed formal complaints with the international governing body after a July 23 vote on suspending the Russian, Belarusian, and Israeli federations was canceled.
Political controversy continues to dominate the summer at World Climbing, the sport’s international governing body. In late July 2026, the Latvian and Portuguese climbing federations filed formal protests challenging how the organization handled its July 23 Extraordinary General Assembly. That day, the planned votes on suspending the Belarusian, Russian, and Israeli federations did not take place as expected. Three new motions, submitted in the final days before the meeting by Cyprus, the United States, and Australia, had been combined into a single text and circulated to member federations less than 24 hours before the assembly. Once that unified motion passed, the three suspension votes effectively disappeared from the agenda.
A First
In the world of sports governance, filing a formal complaint against the international organization that controls your funding and regulates your activities is unusual. For Normunds Reinbergs, president of the Latvian federation, Latvijas Alpīnistu savienība, it was a first. “I’ve been president of the federation since February 2024,” he said by phone. “This is the first time I’ve made an official complaint.”
Latvia’s protest focuses on the procedural mechanics of the July 23 meeting. At the center of its complaint is what Reinbergs calls the “Voting Flow,” a kind of decision tree sent to the federations less than 24 hours before the assembly. It imposed a specific order: first, a vote on the unified motion; only if necessary would the assembly move on to the three suspension votes. Once the unified motion passed, those votes were dropped. As the group Climbers for Palestine argued in an op-ed, the motion did not function as a competing proposal. It functioned as a procedural roadblock. The Latvian federation president appears to agree.
“The worst thing for us is that it blocked the three votes, which was the main reason we came together,” he said. “The General Assembly in April voted that we needed to vote on these motions. And we didn’t get the chance.”
Latvia’s protest also raises questions about where the unified motion came from. According to Reinbergs, the motions submitted on July 8 by the American and Australian federations were identical, word for word. Together, those two countries hold four of the 12 seats on World Climbing’s Executive Board: Anne-Worley Moelter, a vice president, and athlete representative Kyra Condie for the United States; and Naomi Cleary, vice president for finance, and Campbell Harrison for Australia.
The Latvian complaint suggests there may have been coordination between those member federations and the Executive Board, though it offers no formal proof. “The U.S. and Australian motions are copy-and-paste motions,” Reinbergs said. “If they were different, it would make sense to submit both. But if they’re the same, why was there a need to submit the same thing twice?”
For Latvia, the issue also has immediate practical consequences. Latvian law prohibits public funds from being used for competitions that include Russian or Belarusian athletes. World Climbing’s February 2026 decision to reinstate those federations has therefore put the Latvian federation in an impossible position. “Athletes will have to pay for themselves, because we don’t have any sponsors,” Reinbergs said. “The only solution is for the athletes to pay their own way.” Latvia’s protest is therefore also driven by its own direct interests. Whatever the motivation, the official letter was co-signed by seven other World Climbing members: Poland, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, Portugal, Lithuania, and Jordan.
Friends in High Places
Alberto Cruz, president of the Portuguese competition climbing federation, the Federação Portuguesa de Escalada de Competição, takes a broader view. The day after the July 23 meeting, he also decided to formally register his disagreement. But his complaint goes beyond the assembly itself. It also challenges how a legal opinion commissioned by World Climbing on June 22, 2026, was used to justify the procedure.
“Our complaint is about politics and a lack of transparency and democracy”
Alberto Cruz, president of the Portuguese Climbing Federation.
The opinion was intended to answer four questions about the division of power between World Climbing’s General Assembly and its Executive Board: the exact authority of the General Assembly, the legality of lifting the Russian and Belarusian suspensions, the Executive Board’s power to reject motions, and the limits of holding meetings virtually.
Its author was Sarah Umbricht, a Swiss attorney and legal adviser to the Swiss Alpine Club. At the same time she was preparing the opinion, she was also chairing World Climbing’s Governance Commission, an advisory body that works directly with the Executive Board.
At the July 23 assembly, the opinion was presented to the federations as a legal matter that had already been definitively settled.
Speaking with Vertige Media, Cruz returned to what he sees as the core issue.
“It’s about governance,” he said. “The process that the IFSC and World Climbing followed was not correct. The statutes were not followed.” At the center of the Portuguese federation’s argument is the division of authority between the General Assembly and the Executive Board.
In March 2022, the General Assembly voted to suspend Russia and Belarus and gave the Executive Board a specific, conditional mandate: the suspensions could be lifted only once “the grounds that had justified them had ceased to exist.” In February 2026, the Executive Board lifted those suspensions. According to Cruz, no one verified that the conditions set by the General Assembly had actually been met. “The Executive Board has no power to go against a decision of the General Assembly,” he said.
Cruz also notes that the legal opinion was based on documents selected by the Executive Board itself. The minutes from the 2022 General Assembly were not provided to the attorney, even though they contained the conditional mandate underlying one of the four legal questions she had been asked to address. At the July 23 Extraordinary General Assembly, only five federations were allowed to speak. Each was limited to three minutes, with no debate and no right of reply. “So we voted on something that was not on the original agenda,” Cruz said. His conclusion was equally blunt: “Our complaint is about politics and a lack of transparency and democracy.”
Looking Like FIFA
What explains the World Climbing Executive Board’s conduct? Neither federation president claims to speak for the organization, but both have their own theories. For Reinbergs, the answer lies in Olympic money. Since the Tokyo Games in 2021, World Climbing has become increasingly financially dependent on the International Olympic Committee: broadcast revenue, Olympic sponsors, and the sport’s place on the Brisbane 2032 program. World Climbing President Marco Scolaris acknowledged as much in an interview with Vertige Media in early July. “We went through a difficult period, with the risk of being downgraded to an additional sport,” he said. “That changes the financial picture considerably.”
“World Climbing will do anything to escape these votes”
Normunds Reinbergs, president of the Latvian Climbing Federation.
“World Climbing will do anything to escape these votes,” Reinbergs said. “For money, for being on that stage, [it will] sacrifice ethical and other values and start using lawyers.” He continued: “This has never happened before. For an extraordinary assembly or an assembly, World Climbing invites lawyers to support its opinion, and then interprets that opinion in favor of its actions.” As someone put it in a WhatsApp discussion, Reinbergs added, “we are more like FIFA now.”
A legal opinion commissioned from an attorney who was simultaneously chairing World Climbing’s Governance Commission, less than a month before a crucial vote. A change to the voting procedure announced less than 24 hours before the July 23 assembly. And, just minutes before the vote, an appearance by the International Olympic Committee’s new sports director to remind members of the Olympic Charter’s new neutrality principles. That is a lot for a federation that had promised a fully transparent vote. Cruz said he did not want to speculate about the Executive Board’s intentions, but added: “They want to make a decision against a lot of federations, but they are not following the proper process. They are trying to hide something.”
The Latvian and Portuguese federations, along with the other signatories, are calling for an investigation into the July 23 process and the release of all relevant documents.
The Portuguese federation is also demanding another Extraordinary General Assembly so that members can vote on the three suspensions originally scheduled for July 23. It gave World Climbing seven calendar days to respond. At a time when sports federations and their leaders are facing intense scrutiny, as the cases currently involving FIFA demonstrate, Scolaris has insisted that his organization would be different. Now World Climbing will have to prove it.
