It is the year of sport climbing in Italy

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Sinner's Slams and Davis doubles, Paolini's finals and Olympic medals. Yes, 2024 was the year of tennis. But not only that. In Paris, the quarter-finals were also successful. A result has value on its own, but it acquires more meaning in the context in which it fits. It can be an exploit, but also the sign of something that is being built, the intermediate goal of a climb that has only just begun.

Sport climbing will be an Olympic discipline from 2021 and a few months ago Italy came close to its first podium with Matteo Zurloni, who surrendered in the quarter-finals of the speed speciality by just two thousandths to the future silver medallist, Wu Peng of China. In the preliminary rounds, the world champion had lowered his personal and European record to 4'94‘’, improving on the one he had already set a month earlier in a World Cup stage in Chamonix. The same World Cup that saw Zurloni finish second overall at the end of the season. And second at the European Championships in Switzerland behind his friend Ludovico Fossali, fourth in the World Cup and already world champion in 2019. Proving that Zurloni is no accident, Fossali is no accident and above all Italian climbing is no accident.

The results at women's and youth level also testify to this. Camilla Moroni (bouldering speciality) and Laura Rogora (lead), who qualified for the Olympics, won podiums in the World Cup, with the latter able to add a double European title, in the single and combined discipline. Alice Marcelli, on the other hand, became under-16 world champion in speed. Almost impressive results for a Federation (Fasi) that was only recognised by CONI in December 2021, when it stopped being a simple ‘Disciplina sportiva associata’. The transition was a natural consequence due to the results and growth of the movement. In 2024 there were 97,455 registered members, a record that is constantly changing: in 2010 it was close to 15,000, in 2018 it was still 30,000. The upward parabola also concerns affiliated clubs, which have grown to 292. Numbers that have legitimised the re-election in October of federal president Davide Battistella for the second term in a row.

Numbers of a healthy reality, whose horizons are destined to expand. Further confirmation came from the recognition last June of para-climbing as a Paralympic sport, ready to make its debut in just over three years in Los Angeles. There will be no shortage of Italian athletes: at the last World Cup, five gold, two silver and three bronze medals were won.

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Such a sharp growth in practitioners and competitors in a discipline can also be explained by the change in cultural perception. Climbing is no longer seen as an extreme sport, but as a form of urban fitness, an activity that is both cool and regenerating to be practised in city gyms, which are increasingly equipped with climbing walls. It is no coincidence that Turin (16 thousand) and Milan (13 thousand) are the places with the highest number of members. It is also a sign of a spread gap between north and south, which is being tried to bridge with initiatives in the territories. An Olympic qualification event was organised at the Foro Italico in Rome, while in April two social projects were launched in Naples, in the Rione Sanità and at the Caivano sports centre, to allow children to approach climbing under the supervision of local foundations and the Gruppo Sportivo Fiamme Oro. Yes, 2024 was the year of climbing.