Bay of Plenty may be home to the next speed climbing Olympian thanks, in part, to the community's support in constructing a brand new inside training wall.

'We've never been to the Olympics yet, so just getting there is our goal. That's our impossible,” says coach Rob Moore.

The Tauranga-based former head coach of the national sport climbing team has turned his attention to the speed discipline of the sport, and it's already paying off.

His team of six youths – aged between 17 and 22 – were in the Bay of Plenty team that won the recent Climbing New Zealand Teams trophy.

'We've been placing second and third for the last seven years but this time we topped the leaderboard by a slim margin,” says Rob.

'Not only do we have the only speed climbing wall in the country, but we also have great coaches.”

Coach Rob Moore gives some advice to two youth in his speed climbing team. Photo: John Borren.

Rob has coached more than 25 New Zealand champions and the team also gets advice on their individual climbing style from the current female world record-holder.

'She's based in Poland and gives feedback like: ‘Your knee on hold 6 needs to be 20mm to the left'. It's that precise. Each climber has a different way of getting up the wall depending on their height, flexibility and power.”

In 2020, climbing was made an official Olympic sport, but it combined three events – lead climbing, bouldering and speed climbing.

Speed category

'At Paris Olympics in 2024, they've separated out ‘speed' into a category of its own – so I resigned as head coach for New Zealand to focus solely on speed,” says Rob.

Unlike bouldering and lead climbing, the speed climbing course is the same for every event.

'Our international standard wall at Blake Park means we don't need to travel overseas to get experience on the course that will be used at the Olympics.

'We know the time we need to beat so it makes it easy to track our progress.”

Since the nationals, the team is already faster with several athletes knocking almost a second off their record-setting times. The fastest male reaches the top in just 7.5 seconds and the quickest female takes 10.4 seconds. The world record is just above five seconds.

Inside facility

As winter sets in, though, outside is not ideal. 'When it rains, we spend a couple of hours drying off each handhold before we can even begin.

'That's why I decided to build an inside facility,” says Rob. 'I couldn't find a building with 15m stud height, so I divided the wall into sections to train on.

'I'm blown away by the community support. Resene has given me paint, Placemakers Mount Maunganui has donated timber for framing, I got a good deal from Plyman, Profiles Gym has given equipment and flooring and I'm so grateful for the cash donations.”