Her hero’s Batman, but she channelled Spider-Man to break two world records in one day

Short and taut, Aleksandra Miroslaw’s day job is as a personal trainer of Polish soldiers. Her recreation is sports climbing, at which she used to compete with a Batman logo on her chalk bag. She’s aware of the minor incongruity.

“Batman is my favourite superhero,” she said, “although I know that climbing is more associated with Spider-Man.”

In future, Spider-Man may well appear with a logo of Miroslaw on his vest. On the first day of sports climbing at the Paris Olympics, Miroslaw broke her own world record twice in two climbs.

This was in the speed event, in which contestants clamber two-by-two, side-by-side up a 15-metre high wall. Miroslaw appeared barely to touch the hand- and footholds, but to rise on some sort of updraft. The first time, it took her 6.21 seconds, then 6.06s.

Poland’s Aleksandras Miroslaw breaks her own world sport climbing record on day one at La Bourget.Credit: Getty Images

Speed climbing already was said to be the quickest event at the Olympics. It is now that little bit quicker. Most earthlings would struggle to clamber 15 metres on hands and knees horizontally in that time. And this was just a preliminary round.

Another full crowd roared like they never have at Arapiles or Katoomba. The French have been generous to all-comers in these Games, though of course reserving a bit extra for compatriots. When one succeeds, it’s as if French soccer star Kylian Mbappe has scored.

The standing men’s record, incidentally, is 4.79 seconds. Climbers can’t afford to blink. Nor can watchers.

Sports climbing was new to the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 along with surfing and skateboarding. Although purists arched their backs and looked down their noses, all are of a kind with traditional Olympic sports in that they are everyday pastimes formulated into competitions. Breakdancing? Not so much.

Climbing walls was so 2021, when the Covid blight was upon a locked-down world. So was dangling in thin air. But sports climbing quickly caught imaginations, gripped them you could say.

It consists of three disciplines, all contested barehanded, but with plenty of chalk. Speed is simply a race to the top of the wall. Lead requires climbers to reach as high as they can in a set time on a similar wall, but with fewer projections.

Boulder is different. It asks climbers to problem-solve their way without harnesses up four different four-metre high courses seemingly set by a sadist: a toehold here, an outcrop over there, tantalisingly just out of reach, a bare expanse. One climb on Monday included an overhang at 68 degrees. It necessitates strength, agility, daring – and a damned good grip.

Climbers make repeated attempts to puzzle their way up, but mostly fail and the most common action is the fluttering dismount onto a mat, like an AFL footballer coming down from a screamer, but from higher still. When Czech Adam Ondra succeeded in touching the top on Monday, he had time to clap his hands once and raise his arms before landing.

The crowd gave their hearty approval again.

In Tokyo, all three disciplines were combined into one medal. Here, speed has been split off into its own competition, creating an opening for specialists like Miroslaw. More events for more medals and more kudos: here is as sure a sign as any that sports climbing and the Olympics belong together.

There are others. One is that climbing conducts world cups, as does every sport that has discovered the cachet in that nomenclature, and duly the cash. Another is jargon: the media guide lists 37 mostly incomprehensible terms.

Aleksandra Miroslaw of Team Poland celebrates during the women’s speed climbing heats in Paris.Credit: Getty Images

Most tellingly, sports climbing even has a twit with a microphone to urge the crowd to make what they are already making, noise. No self-respecting modern sport is complete without one.

Methodical climbing is said to trace back to Alexander the Great; plainly, he didn’t conquer the known world by going around it. But it was only in the second half of the 20th century that enthusiasts in Europe began to format it as competition, at first on natural faces in the Alps, then when that became too perilous for people and ruinous to nature, on artificial walls.

Speed climbing’s provenance is in what was the USSR in the 1940s, and its then client states are prominent still in that discipline.

World Cups bobbed up in the 1990s and the Olympics opened their arms four years ago. As much as the incorporation of climbing offends some Olympic purists, it also offends some climbing purists, a hardcore who see it as a sell-out of their noble pursuit. But for the sport generally, it has been nearly all, well, upside. Now climbing even gets a gig at the Paralympics. The mind boggles in a good way.

Le Bourget is one of only two facilities purpose-built for these Games. It’s quite the stage.

Climbers work in the shade, necessarily with their backs to the crowd in the sun, like priests of old, making for a cult-like aesthetic.

But there is nothing solemn about what ensues. Climbing is in some ways the apotheosis of what is now thought to be a good sporting day out: a three-hour window, non-stop action, regular thrills and just as importantly, spills, and hype from go to whoa.

Meditative types need not apply, although even meditative types might have to admit that climbing is oddly compelling. The only change that might be necessary in the near future is to make the walls higher.

Australia have two representatives here, both in the boulder-and-lead combo. One is the lyrically named Oceana McKenzie, who also competed in Tokyo and finished sixth in last year’s bouldering rankings. She starts on Tuesday.

The other is Campbell Harrison, a proud queer man from Seaford. Ordinarily, we would not make anything of it, but he does, because he wants to use his platform to proselytise for both the climbing and LGBTI communities.

Presently, it’s a modest platform. Harrison competed on Monday in boulder qualifying, but spent most of his time as most of us would, staring quizzically at the face in front of him and wondering where to start. He finished last. We report that not to mock him, but to demonstrate how damned hard this sport is and how dextrous and valiant are those who succeed at it.

Harrison struggled to get to first base, and for once that’s the literal truth. The crowd gave him a round of applause anyway. But he has a mountain to climb.

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