- The world of climbing is facing complaints of sexualization over TV images of an athlete.
- Twice in recent months, broadcasters have shown zoomed-in footage of climber Johanna Färber's butt.
- The most recent incident happened at last week's world championships in Moscow.
The world of elite
During the semifinal of the women's bouldering event at the IFSC Climbing World Championships in Moscow last week, broadcasters showed a tightly cropped, zoomed-in image of the Austrian athlete Johanna Färber's butt, displaying two chalk handprints, Inside the Sport reported.
No footage of the incident appears to be available online, with the official YouTube broadcast of the event skipping 10 seconds at the moment the zoomed-in shot was initially broadcast.
In a very clearly edited section, the timer in the bottom right-hand side of the screen - which counts the time athletes have left on their segment - skips from 3:40 remaining to 3:30 remaining in a single second.
According to Inside the Games, the commentator Matt Groom apologized live on air as soon as the images were shown.
Immediately after the incident, the official broadcast includes Groom saying: "So let's get back to the action."
Inside the Games added that later in the broadcast, another commentator, Hannah Meul, also criticized the shot.
After the incident, the International Federation of Sport Climbing, the sport's governing body, issued an apology to Färber, slamming the "objectification" of her body by the camera operators involved.
"The IFSC condemns the objectification of the human body and will take further action in order for it to stop, and to protect the athletes," it said.
-International Federation of Sport Climbing (@ifsclimbing) September 18, 2021
Färber ultimately finished 19th in the competition, missing out on the final.
Färber had already faced the same problem earlier this year
The incident was the second time in just a few months that Färber had been the subject of unwanted attention from TV cameras. In June, at a world-cup event in Innsbruck, Austria, Färber received almost identical treatment, with cameras once again giving undue focus on her butt.
At the time of the first incident, Färber criticized her treatment on social media, calling it "disrespectful and upsetting."
"Honestly wtf? Having this slow-motion clip shown on NATIONAL TV and YouTube livestream is so disrespectful and upsetting," she said in an Instagram post at the time, the Daily Mail reported.
"I'm an athlete and here to show my best performance. To be honest I do really feel so embarrassed to know that thousands of people saw this," she said. "We need to stop sexualizing women in
As of Thursday, Färber appeared to have deleted her Instagram page.
The dual incidents have caused consternation in the world of climbing, with one former athlete telling Sky News that such problems could discourage girls and women from taking up climbing.
"For this disrespectful incident to happen once again to the same athlete is very disappointing, at a time when more eyes are on the sport than ever before and more women and girls are being introduced to climbing," the former British athlete Natalie Berry said.
"While the intentions of the camera operators and editors may not be to sexualize an athlete and instead to focus on a visually interesting chalky handprint, in the context of the sexualization of women in sport throughout history, it's quite simply inappropriate," Berry added.