When BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year coverage inevitably dedicates a segment to Team GB’s Olympic exploits, look out for footage of their youngest champion from Paris 2024.
Toby Roberts’ initial reaction was as golden as the medal he would put around his neck barely half-an-hour later, one that switched between head in hands and a look of sheer disbelief as spectators applauded this 19-year-old’s shock win in sport climbing’s Boulder & Lead event.
Roberts was Britain’s only teenage champion in Paris, winning one of their 14 golds, but if you’re searching for his face in the crowd at Tuesday’s ceremony in Salford, you won’t find him – because he isn’t attending.
This isn’t a snub. There’s no frustration or resentment over missing out on the shortlist – when arguably his feat makes him a worthy contender – but rather an indication of Roberts’ laser-like focus, directed on a sport that he loves, one that he may have just conquered but presents enough challenges to entice him the world over.
“It was obviously a massive goal of mine but not the end goal,” Roberts tells The i Paper.
“As soon as I finished I knew my mind would move onto the next thing.
“I love climbing so much. As soon as it finished, I was happy it was over. It was a great experience but I wanted to get back to training and outdoor climbing. It’s a massive personal goal. You’re not competing against anyone except for yourself.”
Speaking at Parthian Climbing centre in Wandsworth, Roberts is between climbs out in Spain – where he is tackling “one of the hardest in the world” in the Perfecto Mundo in Margalef – while it’s a day before he and his mother, Marina, attend Strictly Come Dancing.
An hour with Roberts is therefore an hour with Team Roberts, a fascinating insight into how a family managing the schedule of an Olympic champion operates. There are spreadsheets to update and emails to reply to, with dad Tristian juggling the roles of coach and chief organiser.
Tristian has already seen the fruits of his own labour pay off, having built a climbing wall in their back garden during Covid to ensure his son’s Olympic ambitions would not slip away, while there is a competitive spirit in the air, too, with Tristian admitting he used to be better at chess – that is until Toby started to watch videos and read up on the moves that would help him win.
That is unsurprising upon meeting Toby, especially given he scaled the summit of his own sport in August, and whether it’s staring at a chess board or climbing a wall, it’s clear he has approached his rise to fame in a similar fashion: methodically.
“It definitely feels strange because I’ve always just seen myself as a climber,” Roberts says.
“Switching from being just a climber to being a climber in the spotlight, it can definitely be hard.
“Before the Olympics I felt a lot of pressure, but I managed to do it, and now I’m really embracing that. The more times you’re under pressure, the more times you get past that, the easier it is in the future.
“The pressure I had at the Olympics, nothing can ever surpass that, so now I’m just happy with what I’m doing and don’t feel too much pressure.”
One trick up Roberts’ sleeve is social media. Subscribers to his YouTube channel have increased tenfold in a year – from 7,000 to now 73,400 – while in that same time he has gone from 30,000 followers on Instagram to 184,000.
It all means new eyes on a sport he has quickly become the face of, while this hobby has also helped Roberts practice in front of a camera.
“To start with [the limelight] was definitely difficult, I remember two years ago I wasn’t so good in front of a camera, I would freeze up,” Roberts says.
“But with the exposure I’ve had, and YouTube was actually a goal in that, I started my channel with the idea of getting better at speaking and to portray my image better.
“Now I really enjoy it and embrace it. It’s great to be able to speak about climbing and push it out to a big audience. I love putting content out there, it’s a passion of mine.”
Sport climbing’s rise in popularity in the UK
Roberts is too humble to place himself in the realms of successful sporting teenagers like Luke Littler and Emma Raducanu – “I don’t like to put myself in brackets, I like to just sort of be me” – but within his own sport he is a phenomenon. Red Bull, evidently, have taken note.
He is now a poster boy, especially in the UK, with the country witnessing a climbing boom.
The Toby Roberts effect will only take it to greater heights. The full extent of his Paris triumph will be better known when Sport England release their next report in April 2025, but it is already the case that no Olympic sport has welcomed more new faces in England since 2016.
From 262,100 adults (aged 16+) eight years ago up to 375,900 in 2023, this makes for an increase of 113,800, and of the 83 activities listed by Sport England, only three activities (fell running, hill and mountain walking, and interval sessions) saw a greater leap in numbers.
It also amounts to a 43 per cent increase – the only Olympic sports that can better this percentage are skateboarding and wrestling – at a time when football, swimming and tennis are among the sports to have seen a decline in numbers.
There are now more than 400 indoor climbing centres across the UK, with 43 per cent of those less than five years old – a mighty landscape shift from when David Stevens opened up The Warehouse in Gloucester with his twin brother Rob in 1993.
At the time, The Warehouse was one of just five centres in the UK, and they therefore witnessed indoor climbing’s increasing popularity without really getting a slice of the pie – because centres were popping up nearby elsewhere.
“It’s always been a labour of love, but as more people were opening climbing centres, it was becoming less viable. To stay in the game, we needed to up our game,” David Stevens says.
So up their game they did. The Warehouse closed on the day we met in late November, but for good reason, they opening up at a complex four times the size just outside of Gloucester the following day.
The 270 Climbing Park is a £7m project – more than any centre has spent in the UK, Stevens says – and could welcome international competitions from next year.
It has also allowed the Stevens business to grow. They welcomed one and a half million climbers through their doors at The Warehouse across three decades, but were trapped by the centre’s limitations.
Having had 250 members at The Warehouse, they already had 500 members signed up before 270 had even opened its doors.
It is hoping to entertain 250,000 visitors a year and is catering for the wide demographic that are taking up sport climbing, with Stevens seeing more and more younger people take up the sport, including son Theo who competes for England.
“There’s been a massive bounce,” Stevens adds.
“We’ve seen real growth. It’s now cool. My son will talk to his friends about climbing, he wouldn’t have done that 10 years ago.
“Indoor sport climbing is onwards and upwards, literally. It’s an amazing sport. You can take the family and all climb to your ability. It’s competitive but non-combative, so I can climb with my lad, he’ll thrash me, but I’ll still have an amazing day so it doesn’t matter. We can climb together.”
Theo, 19, enjoys the social side of sport climbing – “you can do it with everyone,” he says – while his sister Charlotte, 23, has seen the effect Roberts and other British climbers at the Olympics have had on their own centre, so too the popularity of Speed climbing, which in Paris was a separate event from Boulder & Lead.
“You can bring a beginner and they can be better or worse and it doesn’t make a difference on how enjoyable the sport is,” she says.
“People are supportive and it’s a really good entry sport.
“I’ve got so many people into climbing, everybody then gets hooked. It’s such a strong community.
“There are so many kids wanting to climb, and they all want to do speed climbing, which isn’t really a big part of climbing, but it’s such a good watch on television. It has massively increased interest. It’s 100 per cent a good gateway, it’s simple to watch.”
Be it Speed, Boulder or Lead, it makes for a gripping watch, and one that not are children are eager to get stuck into. Watch out for those numbers in April, they will surely rise again.
