Olympics-Climbing-Family win for Roberts as father-coach sees son clinch shock gold

By Chang-Ran Kim

PARIS (Reuters) - When software developer Tristian Roberts started accompanying his young son to sport climbing competitions 11 years ago, he could never have imagined ending up as his coach, much less find himself one day as the coach of an Olympic champion.

But on Friday, Roberts became just that when his son Toby won the gold medal for boulder and lead at the Paris Games, to the surprise of both father and son - and everyone watching.

"The Paris Olympics was something that as a family we've been working towards for six years and it's just abruptly stopped, like, with a gold medal," the elder Roberts said after the nail-biting contest in which Japan's Sorato Anraku had been the title favourite.

It all began by chance.

Toby fell into the sport one day when it was offered as an after-school activity when he was eight. Having climbed out of cots, on trees, and anything he could get his hands on all his life, he was instantly hooked.

"He fell in love with the sport," his father said. "He just loved going climbing and we just, as a family, tried to enable that."

YouTube videos of Toby's early days show his father encouraging him and catching him from falls as he performed onerous climbing feats up rocks outdoors.

In 2019, Toby entered the European Youth Cup, his first international competition. Pretty soon, the medals started accumulating. Tristian was there for every competition and almost all training sessions in the lead-up, he said, and before he knew it, he was a father-coach.

"I didn't actually realise that I was a youth coach. You kind of start to look to other people for answers and a lot of that learning can come from a lot of the conversations over the years. You're processing the results," he told Reuters.

"It's very logical, you know, so it's just something that we've made right."

Roberts said he didn't know what comes next for Toby, but that nothing was a sacrifice as long as his son was following his passion.

"I guess LA is obviously an objective but you don't need to think about that for the next six months," Roberts said, seeing another Olympics for Toby at Los Angeles 2028.

"You know, he can just go out and be a 19-year-old boy."

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Hugh Lawson)