China’s YiLing Song won the Overall title at the IFSC Speed World Cup but Aries Susanti Rahayu is being dubbed Spider Woman after climbing a 15m wall in under seven seconds making her the first female to do so in the sport’s history.
But who cares about climbing? Well Spider Woman along with Climbing’s Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020 has prompted to share my less than usual introduction to climbing when I went to Cambridge this summer…
A two day drinking binge with my University mates was where my interest in climbing stemmed. When you’re paralyzed to the sofas arguing about who make tea, it will surprise you what sport will take your interest.
The leaderboard was a mixture of incomprehensible numbers and letters with no decipherable ranking order.
This didn’t matter as the three disciplines of Speed, Bouldering and Lead encapsulated our attention. Additionally the English sportswoman Laura Coxsey seemed to be performing well giving us someone to support through the events.
Admittedly the length of our knowledge extended to if someone fell before reaching the top of the wall they weren’t as good as someone who had made it further.
But the way competitors threw themselves around the vertical walls like they were doing monkey bars in the park was impressive to say the least, and the reason my friends and I have followed the sport from a distance ever since.
The classic Olympic events will take the headlines in Tokyo 2020, but if you have time to kill whether you are hungover or not, I implore you to watch the climbing where hopefully Coxsey can defeat Song and the so-called Spider Woman, taking the Gold for Britain.
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