Team USA Lead Climbers Forced to Sit Out World Cup

Team USA has no climbers competing in the IFSC Lead World Cup in Briançon, France this week. Five Team USA climbers in both gender categories had registered to participate in the event. However, USA Climbing failed to confirm the attendance of their athletes with the IFSC. USA Climbing is the national governing bodies for comp climbing in the United States as recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the IFSC.

IFSC World Cup rules indicate that registered athletes must have their attendance confirmed by a Team Official at the competition venue. USA Climbing unfortunately failed to do this for their Lead athletes in Briançon. The Jury President of the event stuck to the rules, preventing the inclusion of Team USA athletes in the comp. USA Climbing has said it will reimburse travel expenses for its Briançon athletes and their families due to this mishap.

Ten Team USA athletes were registered to compete in Briançon. These include Jesse Grupper, Colin Duffy, Nathan Sato, Declan Osgood and Hugo Hoyer in men’s and Alyssa Keanini, Analise Van Hoang, Olivia Ma, Melina Costanza, and Adriene Akiko Clark in women’s. It is likely that some of these climbers would not have competed had their attendance been confirmed – Colin Duffy, for example, announced he wasn’t going to compete in Briançon after his Chamonix victory last week – but the majority would have.

USA Climbing has released a public statement about the issue. You can read it below:

We deeply regret to announce that USA Climbing failed to confirm the attendance of our Lead athletes registered to compete at the IFSC World Cup Briançon 2024. Despite their registration, the rules require a confirmation of attendance in person by a Team Official at the competition venue. Unfortunately, the Jury President of the event, following the rules, informed our onsite staff that our Lead athletes would not be eligible to participate.

We can only imagine the immense disappointment our athletes and fans must be feeling right now, and we want to express our sincerest apologies for this inexcusable oversight. Our staff are actively working on ways to prevent this from happening again in the future by putting additional safeguards in place to mitigate such issues moving forward.

In light of these circumstances, USA Climbing will reimburse travel expenses for the athletes and their family members who traveled to support them.