elite bums

Let's make this clear: in the climbing world, there are only professional bums.

Big-title competitors - even those complete with sponsors, those we read about in magazine interviews or see on sites like Momentum or Urban Climber - are no different from the bums we see at the crag. In fact, the strongest are the ones that either don't compete (and abhor plastic) or spend all their time between competitions doing the routes you can find logged on their 9b-packed 8a scorecards.

To say there exists two groups - a competitive posse of elites separate from the unshowered masses - is a presumption anyone can make because the separation exists in every other sport. (World Cup soccer teams can't look for scrimmages on the poor streets of Bolivia, and Olympic swimmers don't train in the sea itself. But the best climbers in the world are famous for climbing hard grades on every large piece of rock ever found.)

So in truth, we only hear the term "professional athlete" because it's a sophisticated redefinition of "really strong bum." And honestly, the first one sounds better than the second when we coin it in the industry. But really, if you've spent a lot of time in the climbing community, you know that our "celebrities" spend most their time in rural areas, as unwashed and unkempt as the rest.

(Point proven - click the Momentum link. Just went to their site and a video of BEN SCHMITT started playing. This man is a perfect example: he competed on the US team at the Youth World Championship in Quito, which is how I met him; in his current facebook picture, he's half-naked and standing in the desert with a goofy grin and a blond dread-locked companion, probably celebrating the project he talks about in the video. I could go further and use the two best climbers in the world as paradigm "elite bums", too, but I think the matter here is settled. Thank you, Ben.)