Alberto Gins and the two miracles that bring Spain closer to a climbing medal: “He is a skier in the Shara”

The parents of the climber and his coach met during a vacation when he was 10 years old and shared summers and climbing summers until one day they discovered the cro classified for a Games and with medal options.

From the top of Barcelona's Sharma Climbing rocdromo greets Alberto Gins hung in any way, his body held only by a pair of fingers, but at first glance it is not his weightlessness that attracts the most attention. Your hair is surprising at first. He's 17 years old, but he looks very white, like his coach, David Maci. It was a bet with my friends from the CAR of Sant Cugat. I told them that if I made a podium in the World Cup, I was white, and as I finished third in September in Slovenia, well look …, reveals Gins and Maci, somehow honored, nods as a teacher that is, a strange figure in a sport of adventurers, loners, daredevils.

You see, here, in a series of reports to Olympic athletes, a climber appears and he does so with real medal options at the Tokyo Games before he even reaches the age of majority.

Two miracles in one. The first, that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to include climbing among its disciplines. The second, that a boy of talent still arose out of nowhere to know. Let's say that last year, with only 16, Gins was already runner-up in Europe just behind Adam Ondra, the world champion, the star, a climber with thousands of followers.

Everything has gone very fast. A couple of years ago, I would have said that going to Tokyo was impossible, we were thinking of arriving at the 2024 Paris Games, but the results were coming and here we are, says Maci, who has known Gins since he was a child. When he was 10 years old, his parents Alberto Y Mavi, climbing enthusiasts, took him with his sister Miriam from his native Cceres to Rodellar, in Huesca, to climb El Delfn, a wall of high difficulty and in the nearest campsite they coincided with Maci and his children Lluc Y Lau. Soon the two families wove friendships, shared vacations, Maci went to train Gins remotely and in summer 2018, everyone crossed their fingers. As the climbing was suddenly olympic, Gins requested a place at the High Performance Center (CAR) in Sant Cugat and, to everyone's surprise, he became the first scholarship climber in Spanish sports. Now coach and pupil live very close. That Alberto came to the CAR was a significant step forward. In Extremadura I did not have facilities, it was very difficult for it to evolve. It is as if a skier left the Shara. Here we lack sports climbing walls, we have to train in commercial rooms in Barcelona, ​​together with people who just want to have a good time, but at least there are options and in the CAR it has many facilities, observe the technician, and among the benefits of the CAR highlights A stranger: living together.

I'm quite introverted, it costs me a little

The wall unfolds skilfully, but far from it Alberto Gins is shy. His silences reveal it; he admits it himself. I am quite introverted, it costs me a bit, but in the CAR the athletes have welcomed me. Mara Vicente, Adam Maij… I have made good friends, says the climber, who opened with his arrival at the Catalan center and even more with his international boom. Despite not being very talkative, Adam Ondra himself recognized his potential in the last World Cup and invited him to train with him in his city, Brno, where he met again this February. I didn't expect any of this. I see Adam on YouTube and now I train with him, explains Gins, who also admits strangely in interviews and events.

He is breaking his shyness with travel, with other climbers he is comfortable. Adam, for example, is mentoring him. Do not ask me why, but they have connected a lot, adds his coach, David Maci, for a year also the national coach, and therefore the most qualified to clarify doubts about how a sport like climbing, so wild, so own, distribute medals in the Olympic Games.

For starters, forget about balancers hanging on impossible rocks, from Alex Hannold in Free Solo. Here he climbs indoors and in different ways. When I received the call from the IOC, the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) had to choose between its three specialties, difficulty, block and speed, and before the dilemma decided to take all three to Tokyo 2020. All climbers will compete in all disciplines and the medals will be distributed according to the general score. To understand each other, difficulty consists in reaching as high as possible in a complicated wall, block in solving the maximum possible problems in a low wall and speed in climbing as quickly as possible a wall that is always the same. Being good at three is like being good at the athletics heptatln.

And it is Alberto's strong point. He is very stubborn and learns quickly. The difficulty has always gone well, because it is like rock climbing, but it has improved a lot in the rest, David Maci ends while Gins returns, with his white hair, to hang himself from the top of the Sharma Climbing wall in Barcelona.