2021-2022 Competition Season Announcement

Apr 15, 2021

Climbing Escalade Canada (CEC) is excited to announce the 2021-2022 Competition Season! In the winter of 2020-2021, CEC conducted a full review of its competition offering. This review led to the creation of the 2021-2022 Calendar of Events, approved by the CEC Board of Directors on April 6th, 2021.

Principles

This complete review originated from the following principles:

The COVID-19 outbreak created a pause in the CEC competition series, and allowed the staff to reconsider “what we’ve always done”
Sport Climbing was officially added to the program of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, where athletes will compete in two disciplines: Combined (Boulder & Lead) and Speed (standalone event)
The launch of the Continuous National Ranking (CNR) allowed for the selection of High-Performance Program Athletes to be independent from National Series Events
Feedback from the community indicated that we needed a meaningful review of our events in a Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) perspective
One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to qualification for Regional and National events. A need to identify alternative pathways to qualify for CEC events, outside of the traditional “Provincials to Regionals to Nationals” model, became apparent from the feedback received.
CEC has outline various “pathways” for athletes to qualify for CEC-sanctioned events. The exact number of quotas for each pathway will be determined at least 5 months prior to the National event, based on facility capacity and other factors such as COVID restrictions (if any).

Process

This review was conducted between November 2020 and April 2021. The following stakeholders were involved:

The Competition Committee Event Sub-Group met 6 times to discuss a proposed format
The proposed format was presented twice to the Provincial / Territorial Sport Organizations (PTSOs) for feedback
The Athlete Commission was consulted twice
The Board of Directors was consulted once prior to their final approval

Overview

The CEC 2021-2022 Events Calendar will be comprised of 3 series: