Toby Roberts hoping that golden Olympic high is topped in South Korea

Just over a year on, Roberts is reflecting on that moment, days before he heads to South Korea for the World Championships.

“I was telling myself: ‘If you go out there and climb defensively, then you’re not going to get a good result. You have to go out there, stay present and take it move by move.’ It’s the most nervous I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

His efforts in the lead section put him in the gold-medal position, and after Japanese climber Sorato Anraku slipped, Roberts was Olympic champion.

“It is obviously my proudest moment,” he says. “Not just because of the medal, but because of how I was able to handle that enormous amount of pressure.”

Roberts first got into climbing when he was at school, with he and his parents knowing little about the sport. It wasn’t until it was introduced for the Tokyo Olympics that he realised it could be a professional career.

Roberts wasn’t the only person clocking on to what the sport could be. The release of documentaries like Free Solo and The Dawn Wall was bringing climbing more and more into the public consciousness, with a 2021 study from the Association of British Climbing Walls estimating the sport was growing by 15-20% a year, with 100,000 Brits regularly climbing at least twice a month. But Roberts’s success in Paris supercharged that.

“It’s been pretty jaw-dropping,” he says. “I never realised how big of a boom climbing would get in the UK. I’ve had so many messages from children, parents, every profile of person saying: ‘I didn’t know this sport was this fun!’

“The amount of pathways into it now is incredible, and in such a short space of time. On a personal level, winning the Olympics is absolutely incredible for me, but also seeing how this sport, which I’ve loved since I was a kid, has grown has been incredibly nice to see.”

Roberts’s win was particularly personal to London Climbing Centres given he has previously competed in their “Big Comp”, a climbing competition held at its wall in Harrow. “Climbing is a small sport where you know these people and you see them training,” says Ollie Rooke, who is its head of marketing. “Even though it’s grown, you still have that feeling of community and camaraderie. It’s about everyone getting involved, trying climbing, and conquering your own mountain.”

For Erin McNeice, who finished fifth in the women’s bouldering and lead event in Paris, that community has had a deep influence on her.

“I would be a very different person if I never got into climbing,” says the 21-year old. “It genuinely does make you grow as a person. You’ve got to be good at so many things, not just physically, but you’ve got to be resilient.”

McNeice admits that she found the attention she got after the Olympics a bit overwhelming, given the relatively low profile of the sport. “I’ve definitely second-guessed myself at times. I’m quite introverted and shy. I felt like when I was thrust into the spotlight I needed to change how I was acting, or to be more approachable and talkative. I didn’t do that and people really liked it. People like seeing someone who they relate to, who they don’t see so much in sports.”

McNeice has followed up her strong Olympic performance with a successful year, winning the World Cup Lead title, the first British woman to do so. Like Roberts, she will be in Seoul for the World Championships that begin today.

“Last year, there was a pressure of it being the first time I was performing well. I didn’t want to seem like a one-trick pony. But this year, having basically held the No 1 spot for the entire lead season, it was about keeping it together to the very end.”

A British athlete has never won gold at a World Championships before. Prior to the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics, it was seen as the pinnacle, and even now, it is still taken very seriously. Strong performances in South Korea could help keep the boom going.

Photograph by Getty Images