Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 2: Seven candidates including five girls were declared successful in the judges’ course in Sport Climbing and have qualified to officiate as Judge at a State level competition.
A total of 12 climbers had undergone training in IFSC rules and regulations and practical lessons in judging in sport climbing conducted by Mountaineering Association of J&K at Sprawling Buds School, Bantalab, Jammu, which concluded today.
Those who qualified included Himani Choudhary, Deepika Dutta, Sakshi Magotra, Ambreen Fatima, Juhi Jamwal, Manik Slathia and Sonam Sidharth.
The 5-days course was inaugurated on February 26, 2017 by S. Bhattacharjee, Chairman, Indian Mountaineering Foundation, North Zone Committee, New Delhi in the presence of Secretary and Joint Secretary of Mountaineering Association of J&K Ram Khajuria and Shawetica Khajuria respectively.
During the 5 days course the participants were imparted theoretical as well as practical knowledge of Judging a sport climbing competition by the experts which among others included S. Bhattacharjee, Chairman, IMF, North Zone Committee, New Delhi, Shawetica Khajuria, a national Judge in Sport Climbing from Jammu only and Ram Khajuria, the first national Judge from J&K. For practical training the faculty was ably supported by Shashi Kant, a qualified Belayer and a route setter and other local technical personnel.
Pertinent to mention here that presently in J&K there is only one qualified Judge and the Association has been inviting professional Judges from Delhi and other States for conducting all the local climbing competitions.
The training of J&K’s climbers as judges would therefore lessen the dependence on judges from other states and, of course, bring down the cost of organizing local competitions and thus facilitate conducting of more such competitions.