Big Read: With sport climbing making its Olympic debut in Tokyo2020, Canada's Alannah Yip has primed herself for success by blocking out the noise and focusing on one hold at a time. This is her story. ✍️: EmmySadler
lannah Yip is calm. She has to be. Standing before the Canadian sport climber is a 50-foot-tall wall of sloping overhangs and jutting edges, dotted with a series of holds strategically positioned for her to navigate — a vertical puzzle of which she will soon become the lone moving piece.
The higher she climbs, the more comfortable Yip looks. Each hold is assigned a number — one through 58 in ascending order — and tracked by judges to measure her progress. After navigating a tough section to close out the second third of the route, she grips hold No. 46. With her legs powering her next move, she drives upwards, and reaches for No. 49, her right arm outstretched, grasping it without any doubt. Settling into this new position, she takes hold of No. 50 with her left.
With both hands grasping the ledge of hold 50 and her right heel firmly set parallel to her shoulder on the smooth, curved surface of hold 49, Yip eyes her next sequence. A foot above her hands is hold 51, a small, pink, palm-sized piece. Hoisting herself up, she reaches and secures it with her right hand. Just to her left, tucked onto the side of a large triangular protrusion, is hold 52. It’s in easy reach, but Yip has another idea.
Yip seems purpose-built for the challenge. Her hands tell the story of a thousand climbs, her fingers bearing the wear that comes from asking them to exploit the smallest of surfaces to support her whole body in space. Her physical strength is evident in her lean, muscular five-foot-seven frame, with powerful legs that serve as her biggest driver. And her flexibility allows her to pull off gravity-defying sequences while suspended from the tiniest of overhangs.
“I really looked up to Sean and his brother, Jason. I wanted to do everything that they did. So when they started climbing and going to the youth world championships and Sean was winning, I really wanted to do that as well,” she says. Between her dad, Doug, an engineer, and mom, Moira, a family doctor, much of Yip’s childhood with her younger brother, Trevor, was spent learning and building and seeking solutions. And though she didn’t see it as a real career path, climbing was a natural fit. “A lot of people that climb are also engineers, computer scientists, and that sort of thing,” says Yip.
No longer held accountable by parents or coaches or teammates, Yip’s decision to climb — or not — after a long day of classes and work had to be entirely her own. “I didn’t have Mom and Dad drive me to practice four days a week anymore. I had to make the decision,” she says. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, my coach is at the gym waiting for me to get there.’”
McColl, already a four-time IFSC World Championship gold medalist, saw the change not just in Yip’s mentality, but in her skill. “She came back and she almost just, shehow to climb now. We will often make a joke that, like, generally, North Americans don’t know how to climb but Europeans do. So we have to learn how to do it,” says McColl. “She came back and she knew how to climb. She knew how to train.… She came back after that year and she was motivated.
Yip graduated in 2018 with her engineering degree in mechatronics after taking a lighter course load to accommodate competing and training. Reunited with Wilson as her coach, she set a new, invigorating goal: the Olympic Games. When the qualification process opened up shortly after, she funneled her energy and focus into climbing full-time.
Piecing the puzzle together is only part of the equation. Quieting other thoughts — the doubts and anxieties that come with the pressure of competition and the unknown sequences of a route — is a whole other challenge. “We have lots of athletes who train super well because they’re really regimented and they are disciplined and they have a plan for everything, but they sometimes fall down when they get into competition because you can’t have a plan if you don’t know what’s coming,” says Wilson.
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