A good post about sponsorship from Nick Brown the guy behind the excellent Life on Hold. He points out quite rightly that UK climbers get a pretty poor deal from the sponsorship they receive compared with their brethren overseas. Shauna Coxey and Dave Barrans amongst others are great climbers, but as they deal with the UK distributors of kit rather than the head honchos in the country of origin they suffer. The money has plenty of chances to get diverted before it gets to them and perhaps local heros do better.
Seems to me if we are able to grow this talent and there are a fair few others out there who are mad keen semi-pros rather than full on full-time professional climbers. Our UK climbing industry owes them a little more than just free climbing a few goodies every now and then. If we want people to be able to both compete at the highest level and perhaps more importantly drive and develop standards both here and abroad we need perhaps to be a little less amateur in our approach to sponsorship.
Wouldn't it be good if some of the best climbers in the world wore UK logos on their t-shirts when the eyes of the world were on them at an international event? When those last great problems are being sent and video'ed and seem round the world shouldn't they be using UK gear and waving the flag for the country that pretty much invented the sport/pastime?
Come on UK climbing industry your small young and fragmented but surely if you got together you could help some of these people to help you and bring about a win win?
