Shauna finds final is just out of reach
BUT CLIMBING ON THE UP IN GAMES DEBUT
SHAUNA COXSEY’S climbing career came to an end yesterday – just as her sport takes off into the big time.
The sole British representative in sport climbing’s Olympic debut missed out by two places on qualification for the women’s combined final at the Aomi Urban Sports Park.
For Coxsey, 28, who has been troubled by back injuries of late, Tokyo marked the end of the road as she heads into retirement after a career in climbing which has seen her honoured with an MBE.
For the sport of climbing itself, in its three-pronged Olympic form, things are just getting started.
Although the rope climb was in the first modern Olympics as part of the gymnastics programme, Baron de Coubertin’s head would have spun around in disbelief at the version unveiled in Tokyo.
A rat-up-a-drainpipe vertical sprint, a chess Grandmaster’s bouldering puzzle, then a floodlit lead-climbing overhang ascent combined to deliver five and a half hours of strangely, and appropriately, gripping action.
As a sport a lot more strenuous than fencing and comfortably less weird than artistic swimming, climbing did not look out of place at the Games.
With karate making its Olympic bow in the early hours, the new events have all now landed in Tokyo. With skateboarding and surfing debuting, and softball and baseball returning, there were understandable fears these Olympics would become too bloated.
Maybe 3x3 basketball is a step too far but the move to make the Olympics more relevant to the next generation has by and large been a winner. It isn’t just the teen crowd that has been pulled in. They have been talking 540s and alley-oops at the bowls club.
Well, maybe not quite, but skateboarder Sky Brown is now a household name and Charlotte Worthington, left, will be a gettable pub quiz answer for some in the future.
A gold from Worthington in BMX freestyle’s first Games and Brown’s bronze have given a British audience a way into these alien worlds.
The formerly unfamiliar skillsets of the surfing, with champions Brazil’s Italo Ferreira and the USA’s Carissa Moore, have been just as eye-opening.
Golf and rugby sevens at the Rio Games represented change – but a conservative version of it. The Tokyo additions have made for a seismic shift.
The IOC’s bold leap into the future has paid off. Ready for breakdancing in Paris in three years’ time?