Britain's teenage sensation Toby Roberts: "There's never been a day where I didn't want to go climbing"
With the help of his father-coach, the British youth has become an unlikely climbing hero, winning multiple medals at the IFSC World Cup and rising to the top ranks. In this exclusive interview, the 18-year-old talks about the mindset behind his success and the six-year plan to get to Paris 2024.
Sport Climbing
As the spotlight hit a seemingly impossible climbing wall, the Alps glinting faintly in the background and a crowd of mesmerised spectators at its base, a rangy 18-year-old boy held on by one heavily-chalked hand, the last athlete to go in the competition.
Just when the tension could not get higher, the teenager Toby Roberts turned around, breaking into a mischevious smile and gesturing with his free hand for the crowd in Chamonix to make some noise.
A few seconds later he made a daring leap and became the first and only athlete to click his lead onto the top hold. The effort earned Roberts his career's first World Cup gold medal in the discipline to follow on his victory in the boulder final a month before, in June 2023.
“Climbing is just very addictive. I absolutely love it,” Roberts told Olympics.com of his breakthrough season. “There's never been a day where I haven't been like, ‘I want to go climbing’. Just that feeling of not being able to do something and then just hitting it, hitting it, hitting it, and then one day unlocking it. It's so satisfying.”
Despite his recent success, it was an unlikely journey to the top for Roberts who got introduced to sport climbing by chance and was the first in his family to take up the sport. Olympics.com caught up with the rising star to learn about his journey, approach to the wall and a six-year plan to make more history for Great Britain.
Sport climbing: Love at first hold
Unlike for many of sport climbing’s elite, there were no medals on the walls or boxes full of bright climbing gear around the house to inspire Roberts to pick up the sport.
Nobody in his family had done any climbing when the future World Cup winner rubbed chalk on his hands for the first time.
“I basically discovered it,” Roberts said of starting the sport as an eight-year-old. “I saw it on the event list after school and thought, 'Wow, that looks cool, I want to try that'. And then the moment I went in there, I was absolutely hooked. We had this wacky science teacher who was running the climbing club as well, who after my first session went to my parents and went,' Wow, he's so psyched. He just can't stop. He just wants to climb and climb and climb'.”
A week after setting foot in that after-school club, Roberts took part in his first climbing competition, at which point he “was absolutely hooked”.
As his parents watched on in wonder, Roberts' passion for the sport continued to grow.
“He got addicted to climbing,” his father Tristan Roberts told Olympics.com. “It was just so obvious. A year or two it was just us supporting a hobby and then we had a conversation, which sort of went around the lines of, 'It's not that normal with how addicted he is to this, we need to think about this a little bit more seriously'.”
Nurturing their son's passion for climbing, Roberts' parents took him to new training locations and competitions.
Soon Tristan Roberts also became his son's coach. Without a background in sport climbing, he dove into outside resources, immersing himself in sport climbing technique, history and culture. The following years became a learning process for both father and son.
"To go through that process with him has also been really enabling for me," Tristan Roberts said. "I know every single thing about climbing and taking an eight-year-old with no exposure to climbing to an 18-year-old who's winning World Cups, which still sounds incredible to say. So I've learned over the 10 years how to be a coach to someone in that environment in the same way that he's learned how to be an athlete.”
Senior breakthrough and history for Great Britain
Figuring out the sport climbing world together, father and son made a big leap into the spotlight when Roberts transitioned to the senior level.
He bid farewell to the junior circuit by taking silver medals in the boulder and lead events at the Climbing Youth World Championships in August 2022. Less than two weeks later Roberts won lead bronze in his career’s second senior World Cup, in Edinburgh, Great Britain.
With this bronze, the teen became the first British athlete in 28 years to take a World Cup medal in lead.
“I didn't plan on making finals. I didn't have any of this in my head," Roberts recalled. "Then I saw I was going through the rounds. And then as I got to finals. I was like, 'Wow, I'm in finals'. And then went out to finals full of confidence, just wanted to give it my everything. And then coming down and being sat in that chair and hearing that I just won my first lead World Cup medal ... such a surreal experience and it's something I'll remember forever.”
The historic moment also had Roberts' father proud.
“It's incredible watching Toby go through these experiences as both a coach and a father. I'm proud on so many levels to see your son be so driven and work so hard towards his goal and never give up on that," Tristan Roberts said.
"We spend hours travelling together and we dissect the competitions, we talk about things, and at the same time as him achieving these fantastic things that he's achieving, I'm actually more interested in the fact that he's just happy and has the platform to go out and do what he wants to do. For me that's probably the nicest thing is to be able to have the opportunity to be around him, see that he's happy, see that he does what he loves.”
Toby Roberts: A climber's mindset
Roberts is not only passionate about scaling climbing walls. An avid rock climber as well, he has completed the difficult 8a, 8b, 9a and 9a/+ outdoor routes, making more national history as the youngest Brit to do so. He climbed these routes between the ages of 10 and 16.
“Rock climbing, it's part of what I've done my whole life," Roberts said. "Outside of competition season, and especially a lot when I was younger, rock climbing was a huge part of my climbing. I remember doing 8a routes at Malham Cove when I was 10 years old and then coming back to Malham Cove and then doing the 9a extension five years later, which was a real milestone. (The routes) feel impossible when you first get on them and then working them, hitting them hard and then coming back and then finally taking them off and getting them done."
This is a mindset that Roberts brings into his sport climbing as well.
Approaching the wall as a puzzle to be solved, he tries to block out all distractions and focus fully on the end result.
“The way I approach climbing is to never give up and give it 100 per cent whenever I'm in a climbing gym. I think that comes from my pure passion and love for the sport. I've never been in the climbing gym and not wanting to give absolutely everything," Roberts said. "It's just something which I really love doing. I love being on routes and fighting with the absolute maximum. Feeling your forearms absolutely destroyed, pushing yourself to the maximum in every training session, I love that feeling of giving absolutely everything."
Having fun is another important ingredient in the athlete's recipe for success.
“What's been most important for me is just replicating that real joy for it that you have in training and then applying that to the wall," Roberts said. "That's when I find that I get the best results.”
The joy that Roberts feels while climbing is contagious. Exemplified perfectly by his crowd-pleasing move at the top of the wall in Chamonix, Roberts also shares his love for the sport on social media.
The young athlete started a YouTube channel eight years ago and re-energised it in recent months with behind-the-scenes videos from his competitions and training. The channel now has more than 7,000 subscribers, in addition to the 30,000 people who are following Roberts' journey on Instagram.
The next peak: Olympus
While Roberts' social media followers have already had an exclusive tour of the sport climbing World Cups, he is hoping to take them to an even bigger stage in his future episodes - the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
And Roberts has had a plan of how to get there even before he turned 12.
“For us, Paris has been a six-year strategy, I think before it was actually confirmed as being a sport in the Olympics," Tristan Roberts said. "When we sat down he'd already been climbing, what I would almost consider semi-professionally or full-time, by the age that he was 11. Because that's what he did, that's all he did. So for us that's when we set this goal and there's been a huge number of steps along that process, which I look at as a checklist and a long-term strategy.”
The climber's physical maturity is a big aspect of this six-year strategy, but there is also a strong emphasis on mindset. As Tristan Roberts explained, the goal was that his son would start to strive for top results not as a way to make others happy, but to fulfill his personal ambition.
And there is certainly no lack of this ambition, as evident whenever Toby Roberts speaks.
“Right now, for me, it's just about the climbing," the athlete said. “To qualify for the Olympics would just be everything. All of the years of training, everything I put into climbing, that is the pinnacle. That's what I've been working towards since I was a kid, basically since I was 10 years old."
If Roberts qualifies, he will become the second British climber after Shauna Coxsey, now retired, to compete at an Olympic Games.
“The biggest thing that I'm excited for in Paris is just being in the Olympics, being in that environment is going to feel absolutely incredible," Roberts said. "I've watched the Olympics on TV for years and I can't imagine what it's like being in that environment. Being in the Olympic Village, going out to just climb in front of these huge crowds. Just thinking about it now is almost making my heart race a bit. I can't wait, and I'm going to give it my everything to get there.”