Merry Christmas and a MASSIVE THANK YOU

Christmas is finally up on us us once more and I’d like to take the chance to thank my sponsors who’ve supported me and kept me alive over the last year. (That’s Lyon Equipment with Petzl, Beal, La Sportiva and Julbo and Marmot clothing a recent  exciting transfer - so a thank you to Mountain Equipment too for their support over the last few years)

The Ice World Cup events and the chance to go to the Olympics in Sochi have been a major goal for me over the last 8 months. It’s a totally new challenge for me to compete with some of the best competition climbers in the world. A totally different experience to suffering for hours on end in Scotland.
To help me get my aging body into shape and keep it that way I’ve had to enlist several amazing friends who’ve given their time to help me with my dream.
In no particular order they are....

Tim Budd: who’s put me through my paces to build my strength and fitness up and has refrained from laughing too much when I’m struggling swinging kettle bells and the like around.
Matt Pigden: The whole of last year and the start of this one ive struggled with neck and shoulder problems with my climbing often resulting in many days off with bad headaches. I was referred to Matt by Becca Dent who I’ll mention in a minute. He’s dealt with several of the GB bouldering team over the last few years with massive results, Shauna Coxsey being one of them. After having dental treatment the problems eased and finally allowed me to train to my full potential.
Rebecca Dent, when I first started seeing Becca a few years ago I’d just come out of a winter season where I felt wasted. I was just on my knees walking in to climb. Since then using a controlled diet and careful monitoring I’ve put weight on which has enabled me to recover way better and faster than before and so has helped me train more.

I’d also like to thank the BMC who have recognised Ice Climbing as being an official GB Team alongside the bouldering and lead teams - a big step forward and one that has really helped to get some momentum behind us - there are 10 members of the team including 2 youth climbers and we are all going to attend at least one round of the World Cups - amazing.

Leading up to this season it became apparent that it was going to cost me a fair amount to do all the World Cup events plus the Olympics. Way more than I could ever afford. I decided I needed help. I reached out for corporate sponsorship with some success - a big thank you to DryICE Tools, Jagged Globe but after a little bit of nudging from various friends I then started up a donations page on the web which had great success. It started off pretty slowly but once people were aware of the page the donations flooded in. An incredible response from friends new and old, total strangers and extended family too.
There are way too many of you to thank individually on here but a massive THANK YOU from me as you’ve help me realise my dream.

The season starts in South Korea and I'll be flying out on the 8th January ( well so long as my passport reappears by then) - then it's going to be an action packed 8 weeks with hardly time to draw breath - so wish me luck folks and I'll try and keep you updated as I go along - you can follow me on twitter @andyturnerclimb