Sport climber Prateeksha targets her own peaks

Whenever Prateeksha Arun introduces herself as a sport climber, it is assumed the 24-year-old is a mountaineer. “The first thing people ask is do I climb Mt. Everest,” the 24-year-old says. “People think I am a mountaineer, and I am like that is a different sport altogether.”

Relatively new – its global governing body IFSC was formed only in 2007 though its first World Championships were held in 1991 – sport climbing involves rock climbing in gyms, indoors or outdoors, on purpose-built artificial walls. While it has found its footing in Europe, it is still in a nascent stage in India.

For Prateeksha too, sport climbing wasn’t her first choice. Born in India but having spent her first 10 years in the USA, her first love was gymnastics. But on returning to India in 2008, she found facilities for gymnastics were poor and “really unsafe”.

“My dad used to climb in the 1990s. He was into outdoor climbing in Bengaluru. He introduced me to the sport after we got back to India and it sort of stuck. For the first eight years, I wasn’t that serious. I was good at it and did it because I loved it, but it wasn’t something I was considering as a professional career," says Prateeksha, 24, an architecture graduate. Her climbing career is 15 years old.

The nationals started in early 2000s and Prateeksha entered it in 2010. Two years on, the Bengaluru girl won her first junior nationals. She soon realised she was the best, and nine winning nine titles – two in juniors and seven in seniors – have followed. “It dawned on me that this could be something I could have a career in.”

But the drawback was that there were few regular competitions in India. The Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) -- which governs the sport in India – also kept changing the competition structure. “I wanted to do more competitions and started competing internationally in 2017.”

Sport climbing has three disciplines: lead climbing, bouldering and speed climbing. "I do lead climber and boulderer. I don't do speed,” says Prateeksha.

Lead is about climbing an 18m high wall using rope and carabiner hooks to as high as possible in six minutes. Climbers have to use pre-bolted holds on the wall that are set according to difficulty levels. The way is called route which athletes have to figure out during their climb. The discipline is technical, difficulty based, involves problem solving and is meant to test the endurance. Each competition has different routes and styles. A single fall ends the competition.

There is no use of rope or carabiner hooks in bouldering with the walls 5m high and with crash mats on the floor. It is also difficulty based, involving routes and is a condensed, short, hard problem for which athletes get four minutes with multiple attempts. The emphasis is on the number of problems completed and the attempts needed to do so.

Speed climbing is practically a race between climbers where the route is universally the same with the holds placed at the same spots. The main premise is to go up as fast as possible on the 15m wall with athletes competing against each other simultaneously.

The sport got a major boost after it was included in the Tokyo Olympics.

“From 10 years ago to now there's a lot more awareness and acceptance. People consider it an actual sport now because of the Olympics. I remember people back then would ask me: ‘You climb walls? What kind of sport is that?’ Now more people are coming into the sport, trying it out because they watched it in the Olympics. There is lot more awareness in India, but I would still say it is quite slow. Until we win something, the progress in how many people climb will still be slow. We are quite behind in terms of infrastructure, coaching, walls, route-setters.”

Sport climbing also made its debut at the 2018 Asian Games where India had three entries. Because of its acceptance at major multi-disciplinary events, sport climbing is gaining ground at least in urban areas with walls coming up in gyms and sports facilities. More private competitions are being held.

But participation in tournaments internationally wasn’t easy. Despite being well-off – her father owns an internet service providing company (BBNL) in Bengaluru – funds were always going to fall short if she had to travel, stay, train and participate in competitions, mostly in Europe. Travel uncertainty also led to escalated costs for Prateeksha during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prateeksha almost gave up the sport.

“Thankfully I found Go Sports and Dream Foundation. They got in touch with me for sponsorship. I am so grateful, I wouldn’t have been able to do these competitions without that,” says Prateeksha. Her sister is a badminton player representing US.

Funding at the right moment helped her participate in the relevant events to qualify for the Hangzhou Asian Games in September-October. The qualification is a big relief for Prateeksha’s family too.

“My family was like this finally has led somewhere because I had been winning nationals in some capacity or other since 2012. Winning national gold, it had plateaued at that. When I made the cut for Asian Games, it felt like something went right, I’ve finally made it to one of the big stages that we had dreamed of,” says Prateeksha, who is part of the eight-member Indian team (two are reserves). She will compete in lead and bouldering.

“The long-term aim is the Olympics, which has been a dream in my house since I was a child. My dad has had the Olympic dream since I was three,” Prateeksha said from Innsbruck, Austria, where she is training at Kletterzentrum – regarded among the best climbing facilities in the world.

Prateeksha will compete at the World Cups in Villars, Switzerland (June 30 to July 2) and Chamonix, France (July 14 and 15). “The goal in these World Cups is to make it to the semis. So far, no Indian has done that.” says the first Indian to reach the final of the Asian continental bouldering competition in The Philippines last November.

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