Noasim Eshqi is an Iranian with long black hair. Mina Bakhshi, with a round face and bright eyes, is instead Afghan. They are beautiful, young. They have a story in common made up of hands, feet and walls: Nasim and Mina climb. They do it to resist. That is to say to protest against the regimes of their countries.
Climbing produces self-esteem
Una is a pioneer of mountaineering and now also a protagonist of podcast Nasim, Iran Vertical (on Rai Play Sound). The other is one of the five members of Ascend, an organization that takes care of women through climbing, founded over ten years ago in Afghanistan by Marina LeGree and at the center of Ascend, the film produced by the sports brand Patagonia.
Find strength and self-confidence through sport it is the heart of their stories and after all of many others because even where female emancipation seems to be close at hand, climbing is an increasingly pink choice. The growth trend of this sport recorded in the last ten years in Italy sees women as protagonists, as well as boys and children.
In Italy, a trend that is growing among women
Viola Battistella, 18, climbs the Mirror of Atlantis at Muzzerone in Portovenere. Viola was the first and so far only woman to repeat the
route opened in the 1990s.
40 percent of the 56,000 members of the Italian Sport Climbing Federation (Fasi) is a woman and the number of gyms that open every day (in and around Milan, in particular) is unstoppable. «In climbing you need above all technique, just like in dance. And while men tend to focus immediately on strength, women are more precise and flexible. All characteristics congenial to them that often make them the best» he specifies Davide Battistella, president of Fasi and father of three climbing daughters (Viola, portrayed on page 70, is part of the national team).
«The data boom can be explained by the benefits. Climbing trains concentration and coordination. But also all those skills that are very useful in childhood, just like swimming» adds Battistella, 60, a climber since he was 13, and doctor of the Italian Sports Medicine Federation.
Climbing, a balm that helps you believe in yourself
We are facing a sport born out of “separation” from mountaineering (as a hippie protest in the Yosemite park in California) and which in the 1980s became “sport climbing”or an activity carried out in total safety: the first competition, in Bardonecchia, took place in 1985.
Since then, sport climbers have scaled not to reach a summit but to measure themselves against the difficulty and enjoy the beauty of the gesture. Always safe. And everywhere: by the sea, on low-altitude cliffs, on large boulders. But also in the gym.
Landed at the Olympicsclimbing today has evolved into three specialties: speed (which aims to complete a route in the shortest possible time, and is done in pairs), leads (on routes with progressive degree of difficulty) e bouldering (without protection on blocks with a maximum height of eight meters).
«The style that suits women best is the latter because it requires a lot of technique which here involves the pelvis and the ability to shift weight.
And the risks?
Being a sport against gravity, it must be practiced with caution but above all with an adequate warm-up of at least half an hour to avoid tendonitis or sprains. The physical benefits concern the back and the cardiovascular system. Then there is psychological well-being so self-esteem and anti-stress effect are assured. I hope that walls will spread everywhere like in France where every public park has one» concludes Battistella.
Success among women is a certainty and Alexandra Schweikart, a 40-year-old German based in Dornbim, Austria, knows a thing or two about it. «Climbing is my hobby and my job. I love using and feeling my body» she says who is a professional rock and gym instructor. «My parents started climbing when I was three years old, since then we have always taken adventure holidays in the Italian Dolomites and I have followed them. Today I am the only German who has climbed only with hands and feet El Capitan mountain in Yosemite park.
I’ve seen both children and 98-year-olds go climbing. It is a sport still associated with the male world because it is thought to require only courage and power. Even if it were, would women miss them? For us, the empowerment effect of the climb is crazy» concludes Alexandra who climbs 3/4 times a week in the mountains, in the gym, or at home.
If she’s the leader
Speaking of courage, if twenty-five years ago the few women who stayed under the walls were mostly girlfriends who held the rope to their partner, today, on the contrary, there are more cases in which it is the woman who leads the rope to him. He assures us Alessandro Lamberti, 58, trainer and mountain guide based in Rome.
“The most motivated in my lessons are women, I would even say too much,” he specifies.
Is there a risk of overdoing it?
«Climbing is also a drug because it is pure desire, it is a tendency towards something that is never satisfied, it is a hopeless love. And I think that’s one of the reasons why women today seem a bit obsessed with this discipline: they know how to be more demanding with themselves, that’s it. In rock climbing there is no one to beat, except your own limits, and women, more than men, put themselves to the test without fear» adds Alessandro, the son of a mountain-loving doctor who took him to the top of the Gran Sasso when he was eight years old.
«I founded a climbing school in the Lanciani club over thirty years ago and I was the first Italian to climb two grade 9a walls. Why do I continue at my age? Because climbing is a generator of meaning. There is fatigue, pain in the fingers and feet, sometimes fear, cold, physical and mental effort. But it is the best thing that has happened to me in my life, together with my four children. As happens with small children who scream, exhaust you, are not “pleasant” but in the end you perceive them as the most beautiful thing in the world, so it is with this sport. You suffer, but then you have a sublime memory of it» says Lamberti, author of the manual Jollypower (South side) and of Run Out, a book of climbing stories.
“I have many friends who experience withdrawal symptoms, an inability to tolerate short rest times between routes, or simply can’t stop during an injury. However, this does not guarantee a real increase in performance, on the contrary. Pleasure becomes “negative” so you climb only to quell the malaise of not climbing» he specifies.
«To go to the top, after all, you only need two things. A wall and a fixed thought: having fun, like true sportsmen» adds Lamberti.
Climbing paradise
Where to try already this summer? «Sardinia is a paradise for all climbing styles. But there are “spots” where you can climb everywhere now» adds Lamberti. To get an idea, you can start from the tens of thousands of reviews on his site.
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