The popularity for sport climbing is reaching new heights in the Steel City as more number of children are busy enrolling in the Sport Climbing facility at JRD Tata sports complex to hone their skills.
Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF) has installed the facility of climbing at its premises in Tata sports complex. The foundation also organises a summer camp for the children for hone their skills.
"Several rural children from outside Jamshedpur are learning the ropes. Some have also represented Jharkhand in national competitions," a TSAF official said.
Hemant Gupta, alumni of IIT Bombay and Manager, Adventure Programmes, Tata Steel took it upon himself to see that the Sport Climbing activity became a popular event in Jharkhand.
He said that Jamshedpur is one of the few cities in India to boast a sport climbing facility. Apart from Bangalore and Pune, the steel city is the only city in East India to have such facility. Besides courage and strength, the sport requires foresight, planning, determination and skill. It provides both fun and adventure to people of all ages. It is great for stimulating children’s creativity and will provide them with a unique learning experience.
“ Sport Climbing is a comparatively new and exhilarating addition to mountaineering, which has now attracted a huge following all over the world as well as in India. Since natural rock faces are not always accessible due to factors like distances and weather conditions there was a long felt need for an artificial climbing surface which would stimulate natural rock feature and provides routes for varying degree of difficulty to improve climbing abilities to easily accessible and safe locations,” noted Gupta.
The first artificial climbing wall was constructed in Delhi during early nineties which was sponsored by the house of Tatas. The wall was known as the ‘Tata Rock Wall’. It then spread over in different parts of the country.
Keeping in view the facility available at Tata Sports Complex and its potential, a full time Sport Climbing Instructor was appointed in 2015. Bibhas Roy a National Climber himself made a proper curricula for providing training and converted the facility atTata Sports Complex into a Sport Climbing Training Centre enabling people to become members and practice regularly and in a structured way.
In time some good climbers made it through the zonals and played at Nationals. Talim Ansari became the first boy from Jharkhand to grab silver medal at the National Sport Climbing Championship in 2015.
“ We have over 25 children who are passionate about Sport Climbing and come every day to train. Their entire coaching and equipment expenses are taken care of by TSAF. This year Talim Ansari, was selected to represent India at the Asian Youth Sport Climbing championship held in Tehran,” noted an official.