UKH

This came in a press release: "Two of Mountain Hardwear's ambassador team are celebrating very different climbing successes." Frankly this kind of unctuous advertising and marketing bullshit makes me puke.

Ambassadors? FFS. Two guys we sponsor did good in some competition and climbing a 9b sport route. It was down to them and not your gear.

Apparently "Mountain Hardwear was founded in 1993 in California by a small band of outdoor industry iconoclasts. These passionate climbers saw the industry changing, compromising quality and dumbing down products to serve less technical users. Mountain Hardwear was founded to buck this trend in order to stay true to the needs of outdoor athletes."

They might have been iconoclasts then. Now they are as iconoclastic as any other big business flogging climbing dreams with their clothing. Yeuch.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

If it's not hobnail boots, hemp rope and body-belays, it's not real climbing and therefore bullsh1t.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

Not sure what the problem is here. 2 blokes performing at a high level get given kit by MH for free and they in return provide feedback to the manufacturer and allow MH to use their likeness in marketing. Ueli Steck used to provide MH design teams with a lot of design feedback as do other atheletes working at a high level.

There has to be a degree of give and take.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

 "Ambassadors", "athletes"...……….. they're just good climbers FFS. Utter bullshit.

In reply to olddirtydoggy:

The problem is not sponsoring some climbers and getting feedback and exposure. It is the absurd bullshit.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Isn't someone competing at the Olympics, or in comps, an athlete in the same sense that a gymnast is?

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Sorry, and I know I'm swimming hopelessly and perhaps heroically against the tide here, but I simply cannot bring myself to think of or refer to anyone other than those who do athletics as athletes. Climbers do climbing, gymnasts do gymnastics and athletes do athletics. I am convinced that the insidious joining of the mainstream to use "athlete" to refer to climbers by companies who sponsor climbers and by the competition world has gone hand in hand with commercialisation.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Fell-runners? 

Triathlon competitors?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I would consider any running to be part of or or an offshoot of athletics.

Part time athletes.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Totally agree. It’s bullshit. Climbers climb. Athletes do athletics. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

Parkour?

Speed-climbing?

Running whilst playing a tennis or football match?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

None of them.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Triathlon

Triathletes?

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

The terms jar with me too, but at the end of day sponsorship for top climbers isn't really a bad thing.

Maybe in Whillans day ambassador might be stretching things a bit, but freebies were around then too.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Parkour is a form of running. 

Running on a football field or a tennis court is a form of running. 

You are being needlessly precious about the term "athlete" starting to take a similar meaning to the term "sportsperson". 

 

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

It's amazingly easy to train your mind to ignore all this branding etc etc etc and you can just enjoy the base story.

They could continually flash 'Buy Mountain Hardware gear NOW' on my computer screen in giant fluorescent pink lettering and it would zero effect on me.  In fact, I'd probably subconsciously log it as never buy their shit.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

Yeah I'm really not sure what the problem is either.  Climbers climb, their sponsors give them gear and (if they're lucky) a bit of cash.  In return they get to market their gear by using the climbers.  

That's the price climbers have to pay in order to be able to dedicate all their time climbing, which they'll need to do to climb 9b or win competitions. 

Weirdly, nobody want to seem to give climbers money to climb without getting something back in return. 

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

Surprised it wasn't   Tim Emmett spraying  about helmcken falls, talk about resting on your laurels, this has been going on for what seems like an eternity, but at least ten years, didn't he just go back there and climb a grade 13 or something? and claim the hardest ice climb in the world!, yawn it's sport climbing on ice ffs!!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

But obviously in neither case is running the essence of the activity.

Athlete is becoming virtually synonymous with sportsperson. The word is effectively  losing independent meaning and becoming redundant, which is a shame in my opinion. It is no longer even being  used just for sports which require athleticism. Climbing today, golf tomorrow, then shooting and snooker.......

In reply to Robert Durran:

What do you think of the terms:

Sport(s) climbing ; 

Climbing gym ?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I am happy with it as a term adopted to differentiate between bolted climbing and non bolted climbing. It has  added richness and nuance to the language whereas using athlete to mean any sportsperson has diminished the language.

Absolutely hate it and despise venomously those who use it. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

What do you think of people who happily choose not to climb on rock and essentially use indoor climbing walls quite honestly as somewhere to exercise (like a gym) without any pretence that they are "rock climbing" ? 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

They are still climbing (on a climbing wall).

In reply to Robert Durran:

OK you win, you have worn me down with curmudgeonly obstinacy!  

Someone will be along to medal you later. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

"gymnasium (Greek: γυμνάσιον) in Ancient Greece functioned as a training facility for competitors in public game(s). It was also a place for socializing"

Yup, it's a gym for me. 

In reply to Blue Straggler

Medal is NOT a verb. FFS.

In reply to thepodge:

Last time I checked we were not in ancient Greece.

In reply to Robert Durran:

You've podiumed now!

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

You're singling out Mountain Hardwear here, but they are (obviously!) not alone in this: the commercialization/bullshit horse bolted a long long time ago. DMM, for example, also feature a 'suite' (my term) of 'ambassadors' (theirs). See e.g. https://dmmclimbing.com/Climbers - making sure, of course, to scroll down past the 'Pro Team.'

Money, baby. Money.

However as additional comment - in order to try to be fair - there is no question that better gear has lead to higher standards in all types of climbing.

In reply to Pedro50:

No, I am just on a podium🙂

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

The brand ambassador thing just makes me want to puke. I mentioned this on another thread but I seemed to bump into loads of them in various pubs at Kendal Film Festival last year.  Usually for some obscure t-shirt, beanie or chalk brand. 

Just wish I'd been sober enough to address them as 'Your Excellency' rather than giggling uncontrollably.

In reply to thepodge:

Hehe. In my book dispelling a curmudgeonly rant with ancient Greek wins the thread ;p

In reply to peppermill:

"Ambassador you spoil us"

In reply to Robert Durran:

No but since you seem so against modern terminology I thought you might at least use the original definition. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

I know it's sort of your thing to get disproportionately angry about such minor things but in that particular case I think you're simply wrong. Of course people who do athletics are athletes but "athlete" I don't think has ever been only synonymous with that. Merriam-Webster defines it as: "a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina." So, when you say say clothing is cut for an "athletic build" it doesn't mean just a skinny whippet who runs the 10k at national level or above.

Vocabulary.com says "The noun athlete comes from the Greek word athletes, meaning “contestant in the games.” Anyone who competes in sporting competitions can be called an athlete, but usually the term is reserved for people with a high level of dedication, skill and fitness. If your income comes from participating in your sport, you are a professional athlete."

Although I suspect you know all that and just find ranting cathartic.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

I'm confused, are people against the term athlete and ambassador or are they against climbers getting free stuff and money? 

In reply to thepodge:

After spending much of my life in Yorkshire, the first one. Second one is a way of life for us lot ;p

In reply to TobyA:

I think the term athlete jars when the history of climbing from, say the 1850's to when the rot set in, in say the 1990's was held up as an un-athletic, amateur, pastime with a fine body of worthy literature that charted the stories of heroes and heroines.

Athletes, reduce the honourable pastime to numbers and targets. You might as well be at work!

 

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

I used to feel that the term "athlete" was a bit of a strange one in climbing, but there was a point in my own climbing that changed that. Once I started to train for some specific goals I made a conscious decision to try to view myself as an athlete to try to embed the training and diet habits I was adopting. I probably did that off the back of pro climbers being described as athletes themselves. For me it was about a level of dedication I wanted to bring to my climbing. I wouldn't ever describe myself as an athlete to anyone else though.

In sponsorship terms many of these climbers are a bit more all round than that, climbing is one string in their bow. even  ifif Eveni they don't brands sponsor many different and possibly overlapping sports. E.g. Scarpa will be supplying mountain boots, rock shoes and ski boots to the same person, who may excel in all of these disciplines. I don't really object to calling them athletes.

What would people use instead of "ambassador"? That does seem to be what they are. I think we still have the hokey attitude in climbing that the sponsorship should follow the best athletes (cough), when really brands are saying what are you doing for us? For instance, Shauna Coxsey may be a high achieving competition climber, but I bet some of her sponsors are more interested in the fact she has an audience of 370k on Instagram, who will be there partly because she's a top athlete, but many will be there because of consistent high-quality content of a lifestyle they might aspire to lead. The fact she's really good at climbing adds legitimacy, but many of her posts aren't related to that and mirror content from "influencers" rather than pure athletes.

In reply to Robert Durran:

My discourse with you is NOT serious. FFS! 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Well my discourse always is.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

Why is someone who gets paid to advertise through competition given more legitimacy than someone who is paid to advertise outside of competition?

Surely someone like Moffat or Fawcett were ambassadors before they were sportspeople as they were being paid to look good in pictures. 

In reply to TobyA:

I'll reply seriously to you later once I'm home from my serious training session.

In reply to thepodge:

Hi the podge. You posed "I'm confused, are people against the term athlete and ambassador or are they against climbers getting free stuff and money?"

I believe climbing its essence should be an amateur sport. I believe that freebies always come with terms. Sponsors always want their pound of climbing flesh to flog kit - or banking remembering Barclays helped fund an Everest ascent. And if people buy kit because Jerry Moffat wore it when he climbed whatever, sponsors will sponsor and climbers that want to climb most of the time and do without a day job will take the the cash or free kit, and standards will rise.

I loathe much modern marketing and advertising. The Mountain Hardware pitch struck me as worthy of projectile vomit. I think that company and others like it are just brimful of meaningless marketing bullshit. 

So ... I'm against marketing bullshit-led suppliers like MH using terms like ambassadors to describe their sponsored climbers, and pitching themselves as iconoclasts. So I shall now set MH aside, go away and bang my head against another brick wall

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

Now I'm really confused, you want amateurs to receive money so they don't need a job which will make them get better?

In reply to Chris_Mellor:oddly I find that I can just look past this sort of thing as it's always existed and doesn't really impact on me and my experience of climbing.

What I do find increasingly grating is this sort of thread telling me what I should think so I can be a 'proper' climber , and if i don't share your opinion i am a bad person 

I used to buy (and occasionally eat) Kendal Mint Cake for trips into the hills because I saw their brand ambassador Sir Edmund Hilary, say in an advert they couldn't have climbed Mt Everest without it.

Then I realised it was horrible.

But I still went on to buy a Karrimor Annapurna rucksack on the word of Chris Bonnington, and an OM1, and a Chouinard ice axe . . . 

In reply to Jim Lancs:

That reminds me. Eight years on and I still think this is the best antidote to all this shit: The Berghaus Athlete Camp with Sir Chris Bonnington, Athlete, and Leo-Tard  youtube.com/watch?v=F7b96bQfnjE& Forget MH, Buy Berghaus!

In reply to Wil Treasure:

So basically you fell for the bullshit?

So deep down you know it's bullshit?

In reply to TobyA:

Well I sent my Ratho project this evening, so I'm in a good mood and not feeling angry at all

You may be technically correct about the definition, but I genuinely think it is a shame that the common usage has reverted to mean anyone doing anything athletic (I've no objection to the word "athletic" being used to refer to someone with the attributes of an athlete) rather than someone who does athletics. As I said earlier, the language has lost something. The same goes for "gym". Ratho has a climbing wall and a gym. If people start referring to the wall as a gym, something is lost and ambiguity is introduced - what does it mean if someone asks for gym membership? Yes, language use changes, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. In these two cases for the worse.

And I think it is particularly sad when such changes are driven by commercialism.

As I said, I've absolutely no objection to the word at all.

By the way, is a fat, useless shot putter still an athlete?

Of course I know all that, I just havn't given up my rear guard action

In reply to Robert Durran:

Medal is also a verb.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I think it is acceptable to call the part of the Wall dedicated to campus/finger boards etc the gym part of the wall. Does Punks in the Gym allude to that?

In reply to Rob Parsons:

But is any of this commercialising climbing any more than it has been for 3 decades or so.

It could be argued that climbing was more  commercialised in the comp boom of the 90s

In reply to Cusco:

I am, of course, aware that, along with "podium" it has recently started being used as a verb. It is horrible.

In reply to Cusco:

...and a homonym.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Marginally acceptable.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I know it's bullshit to describe myself as an athlete, but viewing myself through that lens was a useful tool. I don't think it's bullshit to view people like Shauna or Adam Ondra as an athlete.

In reply to Wil Treasure:

As far as I am concerned, if Adam Ondra is an athlete then so am I. But I actually Consider us both to be climbers.

Where would you draw the line? We both train. We both climb.

In reply to Robert Durran:

He is an athlete, you are athletic.

You are someone who climbs, he is a climber.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

In respect of the substance of the OP, no: it's just more of the same. As I wrote, the horse bolted a long long time ago.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

I actually wouldn't mind the word ambassador being used if it was in moderation.

Every other person on Instagram etc though seems to be an ambassador for something or other these days and most don't really do anything of any interest. Maybe I'm missing the point.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Presumably someone of your vintage enjoyed Sid Perou’s ‘Rock Athlete’ series in the 70’s showcasing Ron Fawcett? 

However, the way athlete is used now is more shorthand for ‘Professional Athlete’.

To describe yourself this way (ambassador applies too) is attributing to yourself a certain cachet and buying into all that entails these days - endorsement, sponsorship, social media followers etc.

If that whole new world repels you then I understand why the term grates.

It isn’t going away though.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Climbers is a better term, yes. Athlete implies something more structured to me. Do you train 6 days a week? Do you train in a structured, periodised way? Do you operate at an elite level? Do you compete? There doesn't need to be a simple threshold beyond which you can call someone an athlete though.

I find it interesting that people attribute quite a large bullshit-influencing power to marketing departments. Obviously it's their job, but it is also one which requires them to justify their existence but becomes detached from their customers. Athlete is no doubt the catch all term used in bigger brands because they sponsor lots of different sports. For them athlete is a descriptive job category. Then when they're writing their materials they use this internal speak, it's how their boss talks after all. Smaller brands look to the bigger brands for what to do, how to speak and so on. So while I might think athlete is accurate, it does jar because it's not the language of our community. I suspect they're trying to avoid "Mountain Hardwear Sponsored", but I don't really understand why. I suppose they want to imply some deeper connection, which is where the bullshit lies.

Btw, to anybody worried or discomfited by the general issues discussed here: batten down the hatches if the Olympics do go ahead as planned this year!

In reply to Cusco:

Meddle...

In reply to thepodge:

So I'm not a climber?

Utter bollocks.

And seriously, I really, really HATE that sort of them and us attitude. It stinks.

I've been binge watching Ondra's America road trip Vlogs - he is a climber EXACTLY like me - except better at it and with a film crew.

In reply to UKB Shark:

Yes, but I don't think it is relevant. If someone had made a film about Dawes called "Rock Dancer", would it mean he was a dancer? No, it would just mean he had a climbing style with some attributes of a dancer. Likewise it simply meant Fawcett had an athletic style. I'm not sure anyone then was saying climbers actually were athletes. 

Yes, as I said earlier the whole thing is insidiously hand in hand with commercialism.

I am well aware of that!

Did I mention the BMC 'ambassadors' (https://www.thebmc.co.uk/inspirational-climbers-become-bmc-ambassadors), one of whom - in a double whammy - is wearing the Red Bull logo in her PR shot?

In reply to Rob Parsons:

I do get where the BMC and others are coming from with the term ambassador, but it just seems such an overblown and pompous word, laden with connotations of international politics. Why can't they just be called, say, representatives?

In reply to Wil Treasure:

Yes, sadly, I suspect you are probably right about all this - these words are teminology which have seeped down from marketing departments with real connection to climbing.

In reply to thepodge:

Here is an example of one reason why we should not use the word gym for climbing walls. I genuinely have no idea whether he is talking about a gym or a climbing wall:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/cancelling_a_gym_membership-716...

In reply to Robert Durran:

Did he call it a climbing gym?

No he did not 

So it's not a climbing wall, and it's not ambiguous, and I think that actually you know all this and are just trying far too hard and repeatedly to hammer home your "point"
 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Nosense. This a climbing website and it is becoming increasingly common on here for people to just say gym when they mean climbing gym or climbing wall.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Now THAT'S "Nosense"  

I've never noticed it but in fairness I don't really look at the Wall subforums or even, much, the climbing ones, where such use would clearly be IN CONTEXT. 

The thread to which refer, is not in a climbing sub-forum. I will donate £5 to MRT if it turns out that it's about a climbing wall. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

Very recent.

"Though causing some degree of consternation among language purists (possibly partly because it only seems to surface at biennial intervals coinciding with the summer or winter Olympics), use of the word medal as a verb meaning ‘to win/receive a medal’ has in fact been around for some time. The first recorded usage dates back to 1822, with an original sense described in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘to decorate or honour with a medal’."

In reply to Robert Durran:

Royal Mail?

UPS?

DPD?

Very impressive. How did you find a box big enough?

In reply to Robert Durran:

If you UKC pedants did a modicum of research and were not so often victims of Muphry's law I'd have more time for you. The first reported use of medal as a verb is apparently 1822

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/medal_2

Many nouns adapt to use as a verb in common use and are now in the dictionary as both.

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

'Ambassador'? That sounds much nicer than 'wad' which, I am informed by a young person, is so last year.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Lolz, yeah you are exactly like Ondra... except all the huge differences. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

It started low key with Geoff Birtles in Crags magazine calling Ron Fawcett the Seb Coe of British rock and a rock athlete, which when comparing diet and training regimes, clearly he was not.

In reply to thepodge:

We are both climbers. We go climbing. The "huge differences" are merely cosmetic compared to what we have in common.

In reply to Offwidth:

Ok fair enough. But I still think it is a shame that such an ugly usage has come into such vogue in recent years. As for podium........

In reply to Chris_Mellor:

For anyone wondering how Robert Durran manages to accumulate so many posts on these forums every month, refer them to this thread.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I think you are a closet cumgathelete and that you do protesteth too much. Bigly even.
 

In reply to Robert Durran:

It's just marketing bullshit in the same way that Sales men are now mostly called Business development managers.