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Alannah Yip is set to become the first woman to represent Team Canada in sport climbing at the Olympics.
The Tokyo Games will see the inaugural edition of the event, with Yip and Sean McColl representing Canada in the women’s and men’s event respectively.
And it was touch and go as to whether Yip would even make the Games, the Vancouver product on the outside looking in going into the final qualifier in Los Angeles.
“I was pretty nervous, I knew that was my last shot to qualify and I had to win the event,” Yip said before flying to Japan. “The previous competitions they took about seven athletes. This one was right down to the wire.”
Three complete performances in the bouldering round followed by a score of 53 in the lead climbing, though, and Yip was off to the Olympics.
“I was overwhelmed. I was so relieved. It had been such a long arduous qualification process for me,” she said.
Yip has described her journey, from starting in the sport at age 10 right up to the qualification for Tokyo, as a rollercoaster.
The 27-year-old never thought the sport would make it onto the Olympic program.
She even quit climbing for a year to focus on her mechanical engineering degree.
“I didn’t want to half-ass engineering,” Yip explained. “I kind of thought there was no real career future in climbing.
“After about a year I was pretty miserable. I loved engineering but missed climbing so much.”
Yip caught the Olympic bug in 2010, watching the Winter Olympics in her home city. She remembers watching Ashleigh McIvor winning gold in skicross and it even prompted her to briefly dabble in that sport too.
Now, she couldn’t be happier that she stuck it out with her main love.
“I am so incredibly excited to be representing Canada at the first Olympic Games (in which climbing is included as a sport),” she said. “It’s been a really long journey for climbing.”
The event in Tokyo will consist of three disciplines: Speed climbing (a timed run up a 15-foot wall), bouldering (a collection of three complex courses to complete in under five minutes each) and lead climbing (a similarly blind course with four minutes to get as high up as possible).
Bouldering is Yip’s specialist discipline, and on an individual level she became the first Canadian to make the final round of a World Cup event in China back in 2017.
“It gave me a huge boost of confidence to know I was strong enough mentally and physically to be able to make that final round,” she said.
“It’s really been a challenge to work on the other two disciplines.”
There is only one set of medals per gender up for grabs at Tokyo 2020, and combining the trio is something that big names in the sport such as Americans Alex Honnold and Lynn Hill, as well as Adam Ondra from the Czech Republic have been critical of.
However, given the circumstances, Yip believes the International Federation of Sport Climbing got it right.
“I think it was the best that our federation could do with what was given to them by the IOC,” Yip explained.
“Because they only gave one medal, if they chose a single discipline to represent all of climbing it would have caused the other two disciplines to die out somewhat.
“The goal eventually is to have three separate medal events but for our first Olympics I think they did a great job.”
There are already two medal events slated for the Paris Olympics in 2024.
Until then, though, Yip plans to give it her all in Tokyo, and heeding the words of coach Andrew Wilson, to ‘Embrace your geekdom.’”
“That means to me I do whatever makes me happy, I don’t change myself for others,” Yip said.
Yip gets her Olympic sport climbing campaign underway with the qualifiers on Wednesday morning.
Listen to the full interview – https://iono.fm/e/1081256
