World Cup Amateurs: .Ready.Set.Start.

     When you think of World Cups you think of people like Anna Stöhr, Sean McColl...Shauna Coxey. At least I do. These are the faces behind Udo Neumann’s lens, the prodigies that keep us sweaty palmed and clenching bleachers as we endure the excitement of finals. These are the inspirational athletes that we aspire to be like. 

    

Anna Stöhr, Mammut Image

Sometimes in isolation... I not-so secretly spy on Shauna Coxey and Akiyo Nogguci during their warm up and steal their boulder problems to get a taste of their raw talent. Great comp strategy, I know... projecting the individual moves of Puccio’s warm up does wonders for the headspace. Not! But I simply can’t resist my curiosity... how strong are they!? 

     Judge me if you must, but I’ve made a daily habit out of stretching on my living room floor, watching IFSC replays. I hate stretching, but I like climbing videos.... and watching Akiyo Nogguci manage the splits, somehow in every finals round, is the only thing that truly motivates me to increase flexibility. Nonetheless, It’s a pretty consistent crew in finals with the athletes we respect and recognize to be the best. They are, after all, the best!!

Flexible Akiyo

    But some 20 - 30 spots below the semi finals cut off line is a pool of athletes... that’s where I find my name! Somewhere amongst the amateurs. Over the past year my name has slowly been creeping up the bottom of this list. Starting from 2nd last ... to 10th last... slowly inching up towards the semi-final cut off. To be honest though, I’ve grown skeptical about the saying ‘you have to start somewhere’. I’m not sure if I know where somewhere is? I’ve been trying to do my history on some of these athletes to find where their somewhere was and honestly... I’m not convinced they started anywhere but on top.

     So I guess my somewhere has become World Cups. I try to take away as much as I can from every competition and study the strengths of these tremendously successful athletes. I watch the competitors that hover around the semi finals marker intently and try to learn what it takes for them to break through. My experiences have taught me a lot about why I enjoy competing, even though my rankings aren’t where I’d like them to be. I’ve adopted a sort of ‘projecting’ mentality to reach my goal of making it into semi finals at a European World Cup. It’s going to take a lot more failure and some thick skin to reach this goal, but it’ important for me to prove to myself that I can do it!

So, if your curious what ‘amateurs’ are doing at World Cups, check out the video I put together after competing in Innsbruck and Grindelwald.

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Jelisa Dunbar