Revised - Climb Yukon is hosting Olympic Sport Climber Alannah Yip this week for sport climbing workshops, with the week’s events culminating in a competition Saturday at Porter Creek Secondary School (PCSS) from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Yip, from North Vancouver, finished 14th in the Women’s Combined Sport Climbing competition at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo in August.

Yip, 28, started climbing when she was six, took a climbing course when she was nine, and began competitive climbing when she was 10.

She won her first national climbing title at the age of 12.

Yip qualified for the Olympics by finishing first in the Combined event at the Pan American Championships in Los Angeles last February.

She taught a coaching clinic Wednesday and a route-setting clinic Thursday at PCSS. According to Yip, the first clinic was a lot about youth coaching and development, whereas the route-setting was very hands-on. First she gave some pointers and everyone tried their hand at setting a climb. Then they worked through the routes together.

The Star spoke with Yip before her coaching clinic on Wednesday. She related how she got into sport climbing.

“Some longtime family friends of mine, I guess they went to school with my parents in university. They had two sons, one was six, one was eight years older than me. They started climbing when they were around 10 years old and I looked up to them like older brothers. I just wanted to do anything that they did. So when they started climbing, I also started climbing. And then I really just fell in love with it. It was like, the perfect sport. It was not only physical, but mental as well. I’ve heard climbing referred to as ‘physical chess’, because of how much problem-solving there is involved. I’m a very sort of logical kind of problem-solving kind of person. I have a degree in engineering if that tells you anything about the way I operate. I just never stopped,” recalled Yip.

The two brothers were Sean and Jason McColl, also of North Vancouver.

“Funny story,” related Yip. “The younger one (Sean) was the other Canadian who went to the Olympics for climbing.”

Sean McColl was also instrumental in getting Sport Climbing into the Olympics.

Yip will be playing a key role in the climbing activities this week.

“I’m going to be setting (the route) for the competition we’re having on Saturday, which will actually be a qualifier for the National Championships.”

Yip is looking forward to the competition on Saturday.

“It’s going to be really fun. We’re going to have 25 new climbs, ranging in difficulty from easy to quite hard. And there’ll be three different categories: youth, competitive and recreational. You can sign up for whichever one you want and you get a two-hour time slot with your whole group that’s competing.

“It’s a format called scramble format, so it’s a really fun, collaborative type of format in which you basically go in and climb whichever climb you want. All climbing has a very community type of feeling and is a very supportive sport.

“In the end, it’s always you versus the wall, so in a competition like this, you’re always cheering for each other, helping each other out, giving what you call ‘data’, so try to give tips and tricks on how to do a climb. What order, what sequence you grab the holds in and move your feet. So it’s a really fun type of competition.”

One male and one female in the Competitive category over 16 years old will qualify for the nationals.

The senior national bouldering championships are set for Nov. 27-28 in Quebec City.

The youth national bouldering championships will take place May 22-23, 2022 in Laval, Quebec.

As for the Olympics, Yip really enjoyed her Games experience.

“It was amazing! It’s the first year that climbing was in the Olympics and so I’ve never experienced an Olympic Games or any sort of big multi-sport games, so it was so crazy, so insane, in this place, in the Olympic village, where you’re surrounded by thousands of the world’s best athletes. The energy there was just electric. Everyone was so excited all the time.

“I understand that it was quite a bit different with the COVID restrictions. Everyone was very respectful. I’d say 98 per cent of the people wore their masks properly all the time, in the buildings and outside walking around. So it actually felt quite safe. We were COVID-tested every single day. But there weren’t a lot of places where you could gather and meet other athletes, which was kind of unfortunate,” related Yip.

Gatherings inside were frowned upon. Athletes were, however, allowed to gather and talk outside.

“You weren’t allowed to go and watch other sports in person – only your own sport. So it was kind of sad,” recalled Yip.

“You were very focused on what you were in Tokyo to do, because you couldn’t go watch anything else.”

As for the competition itself, Yip had mixed results.

“The format of climbing was a little bit weird ... there’s three disciplines in Sport Climbing, and we had to do all three in the Olympics, which would be like if a runner had to run 400 metre hurdles, and 100 metre dash, and a marathon, in the space of six hours.

“So the discipline that has historically been my weakest, and I’ve been training for the least amount of time – speed climbing – I actually did the best in. So I started the competition off with a bang, I had a new Canadian record and a new personal record by half a second. I was really excited about that, but after that, didn’t go so well. But it was still a great experience.”

Yip completed the 15 metre speed climbing route in an astonishing 7.99 seconds.

“For speed climbing, the route is the same every single time,” explained Yip.

“Everywhere in the world. I’ve actually practiced that exact route many many times.”

Yip feels her experience in L.A. helped prepare her for competing on the world stage.

“Yeah, certainly … in L.A. there was the most pressure on me to perform that I’ve ever had and I was able to perform my best on that day and I proved a lot to myself. I made it through many many months of hard training and self-doubt and it was certainly a struggle to even get to L.A. and then to be able to have the performance of a lifetime the one day that really mattered.

“I went into Tokyo – because of that, I knew I could handle any amount of pressure that was there. And it certainly wasn’t the pressure that got to me in Tokyo.”

Competing in Tokyo meant a lot to her.

“I was just really honoured to be a part of it,” recalled Yip. “Climbing’s been a huge part of my life for a long long time, and it’s really taught me a lot, given me a lot, and really shaped me as a person. And I really hope to share that with a lot of other people … getting to come up here, even share some knowledge of coaching and route-setting with the people here.

“Also getting to talk to people at the gyms in Vancouver who will tell me ‘you know, I’ve never climbed before, but I saw it in the Olympics and I thought I’d give it a try.’ That’s really cool, because I think it’s an amazing sport that is really good for everybody, basically.

“It’s a really cool thing – you can have different difficulties of routes right on top of each other or right next to each other, so you don’t necessarily have to be at the same level of climbing ability as someone you’re climbing with to go together and have a good time together.

“It’s got a really strong community globally. People travel all over the world and every time you travel, you really do feel like you’ve got an instant connection with other climbers. I think its a really kind of special sport, and I really hope that a lot more people can really get to experience that.”

As for the future, Yip has her sights set on the next Olympic Games.

“I took a little bit of a break from climbing after Tokyo. I’m back in it now. I just did my first international competition last weekend, and I think I’m aiming to try to qualify for one more Olympic Games. That’s in three years in Paris. I’ll be 31, by the time that’s over, but we’ll see. I think right now, that’s kind of what I’d like to do in the next three years.”

The international competition Yip took part in was the North American Cup competition in Kanata, Ontario. Athletes from the U.S. (about 30 of them) and Canada competed in the event.

Next up, Yip will be competing for Team Canada at the senior national bouldering championships in Quebec City in November.