Great news, the BMC have now released the selection policy for the GB National Development Squad which will be used this year to select the 2020 squad and the new National Ranking System. Here we have simplified it a little to explain how it’s going to work.
The system applies to children competing in categories Juniors, Youth, A, B & C as well as is relevant to those in upper D.
The way it will work is that, for each category, there will be 6 places for Male and 6 for female. These will be filled first by those qualifying under priority 1, then by those qualifying through priority 2 and finally through the priority 3 from the selection event.
Selection Criteria
Priority 1
- Priority 1 eligibility will be by making finals or placing 1st, 2nd or 3rd in one of the qualifying international competitions:
- IFSC Youth Events (European Youth Cups, European Youth Championships and World Youth Championship) for Junior, Youth A and Youth B (NB. these competitions are only open to existing Development Squad members),
- Youth Colours Climbing Festival in Imst and the Flatlanders Cup (Lead and Boulder) at Arnhem for Youth C (NB. these competitions are open to anyone whether existing Development Squad members or not).
Priority 2
- Priority 2 eligibility will be based on the newly created National Ranking System (see below).
- For Junior and Youth A, places will be allocated based on the top ranked athlete for lead then boulder and then combined.
- For Youth B and Youth C the places will be allocated to the 1st and 2nd ranked athletes based on their combined score.
- In addition, the winner of Youth D at the Youth Climbing Series Final will, if they’re old enough to be in Youth C in 2020, be eligible for a place.
Priority 3
Priority 3 eligibility will be by determined based on ranking from the GB National Development Squad ‘Selection Event. The top climbers at this event will fill the remaining squad places.
The Selection Event
The selection event details are not yet confirmed but:
- All competitors will be required to attend, plus
- Anyone who made a top 5 in the qualifying national competitions (below) will be invited to attend.
- The placings at this event will be used as the input to the following year’s national rankings.
Official National Competitions
The following competitions are the ones used to determine the national ranking through the year:
- Welsh Climbing Championships (9th Feb at Beacon Climbing Centre, Caernarfon)
- British Youth Open Bouldering Competition (16th Feb at Rockover Climbing Centre, Manchester)
- British Youth Open Lead Competition (6th Apr at Big Depot, Leeds)
- Scottish Youth Bouldering Championships (25th May at Eden Rock, Edinburgh)
- Youth Climbing Series (Final) (27th and 28th Apr in Sheffield)
- Junior British Bouldering Championships (22 June at Harrowall, London)
- British Lead and Speed Climbing Championships (Date & Venue TBC … in 2018 it was held in July)
- Scottish Youth Climbing Championships (Date & Venue TBC … in 2018 it was held in Sept)
The National Ranking System
The system tracks the results of the national leading and bouldering competitions and uses a ‘field factor’ system to weight the results to reflect the quality of the competitors in each event. The 2019 rankings are shown here.
Essentially, all competitors are ranked based on a starting order (this year is based on the results of last year’s squad selection event as this is the first year the ranking system has existed for Junior and Youth).
Each competition competed in will yield a placing and, based on how ‘strong’ the field was (how many of the current top ranked climbers attended) the placing will produce points. (The full explanation of how the current ranking, competition placing and field weighting work can be found here). The points from all competitions competed in so far this season are accumulated and produce the new ranking which determines the field weighting for the next competition of the season and so on.
The combined score is created using the best 2 boulder results and best 3 lead competition point results.
Overall it looks like a really good system; it’ll help people to fully understand where they are in comparison to other competitors in their categories and we’re really looking forward to seeing how it works through the season.
