MARK ETHERIDGE: Walls hold no fears for young Olympian

When Aniya Holder is confronted by the speed-climbing wall at the 2024 Paris Olympics in France it should hold no fears for her. That’s because the Grahamstown-born and now Gqeberha-based 22-year-old has already come up against so many figurative brickwalls in her life.

One of seven children, she lived in Makhanda, as Grahamstown is now named, all her childhood and was home schooled. Always sporty, having dabbled in dancing and karate and “random stuff on the side” she was introduced to climbing when she was 14.

“My friend did it and I thought this looks pretty cool’. It was just a little climbing wall at Rhodes University so I paid a small yearly fee and tried it out when it was open,” she remembers.

“When I was 16 I started climbing more seriously and became a member of the Rhodes Mountaineering Club so I could go more often, and then I started climbing outdoors with Graham Carlson, doing a few competitions. My first comp was when I was 17 and then I did quite a few more.

“My dad [Stephen] was very supportive and liked the idea of me climbing. He didn’t climb himself and preferred hiking. Having so many kids and working full time [director of music at Kingswood College and an English teacher] he didn’t have much time.”

There was, in Holder’s words, “not so much” input from her mother. “She left us when I was in my early teens.”

There was more angst in her life when in 2020 her father died during the Covid-19 lockdown. “That was a really sad and hard time for me. He never got to see me compete or even see me climb outdoors. I carry him around with me... I made a little painting of him on my chalk-bag so whenever I go climbing he comes climbing too.”

Not long after her father’s death, she moved to the “bright lights” of Gqeberha. “I moved with no money. It was very hard. But I have a job at the local climbing gym and coach the kids. It’s a full-time job which makes it hard to train but I’m very grateful.”

She leaves home at 4.30am daily and finishes work/training in the early evening and tries to be in bed by 8pm.

“I cycle everywhere, which is good for training. I got kicked out of my apartment because I couldn’t afford the rent, but my coach, Jay-D Muller, has rented me his spare room.”

She got into speed climbing in 2021. “I punched a volume [an extension attached to the climbing wall] and broke all my knuckles,” she says. “A week after the cast came off I fell from a high boulder and stuck my hand out to avoid hitting my head and ended up dislocating my elbow.”

That put her out for five months during which she regained her strength and did rehabilitation work. It was also the end of one part of her climbing career. “ I can’t do the boulder and lead discipline any more, it just hurts too much.”

Coach Muller suggested she should try speed climbing. “But we don’t have a speed wall in Gqeberha, only a third of a wall, so we put up one third and then train on the three different sections. It was just for fun at the time but it was still pretty cool.”

One stepping stone led to another and she trained for her first competition in March 2023 but it then got postponed to September. She won the SA championships after just one session on a full speed wall in Johannesburg a month before that.

“It was nice to know that I could still be someone and my coach came second in the competition, so it was great for the Eastern Cape as his other student also won in his age category.”

Her Olympic training needs her to train on that full wall so she has been lucky to have the backing of Everest Wealth which sponsor sa flight to Johannesburg every month to train. “They have also offered to put money towards me going to France before the Olympics so I can get more full-wall experience.”

She sealed her Olympic spot at December’s International Federation of Sport Climbing African qualifier in December when she rocketed up the 15m climbing face in 11.33sec, two seconds faster than any other woman.

The tall and strong (1.75m and 75kg) rock rabbit makes no bones about the fact that her speed climbing has kept her grounded.

“It’s kept me busy, it’s kept me tethered to this earth through all of the hard times. It’s always been there for me, like a medication and no-one can take it away from me.

Holder is all too aware of the tough times she has overcome.

“There were some really hard times. I live for climbing now and have done so for quite a long time. It’ll be my first time out of the country and all my siblings are so excited, especially my brother in Johannesburg who takes great photos of my climbing. My one sister lives in the UK and she’ll try to watch me. It will be lovely to have someone watching me climb for my country.”

Says George Stainton, International Federation of Sport Climbing board member and Africa president: “Paris 2024, where we have four climbers, follows the success of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where we had two athletes.

“Sport climbing across Africa is becoming known and more African countries are joining the federation family which augurs well for the development of the sport and the athletes across all three disciplines.

“We are extremely impressed with Aniya’s achievements, attitude and discipline to become our female speed-climbing Olympian, despite having poor facilities to train on in Gqeberha, so I call on all businesses and individuals to support her as much as possible in her training and competition efforts.”