Sports physician Volker Schöffl has just resigned from his position on the medical committee of the International Sport Climbing Federation IFSC – because in his opinion too little is being done there to prevent athletes from developing eating disorders. A move that caused an uproar in the scene.
Climbing is currently a very popular sport: it looks young and modern, demands a lot of muscles, promotes coordination and skill. Many people do bouldering or rope climbing as a hobby. At the professional level, speed climbing, bouldering and rope climbing have been Olympic since 2021. The World Cup competitions now have a large number of enthusiastic spectators – who, however, wince every now and then when individual athletes look really thin. Two renowned sports physicians have just resigned from the medical committee of the International Sport Climbing Federation IFSC because, in their opinion, they knowingly accept eating disorders in sport. One of them is the German professor Dr. Volker Schöffl, who explains this step in the stern interview.
Mr Schöffl, what was your job on the IFSC Medical Commission and how long were you active there?
The IFSC was founded in Paris in 2009 in its capacity as the governing body for sport climbing and I have been a member of the Medical Committee since 2009. As members, we are volunteers who answer medical questions in sports and then make appropriate suggestions to the board, which are then either implemented or not. That means we only have an advisory role, we don’t have a decisive role. But of course we try to detect grievances in sport and – if they exist – to somehow fix and improve them to protect the athletes.