Cirayliq rock climbers

I used to do some rock climbing a while ago. I haven't officially quit, but I just haven't done it for a long time now, since I lost my climbing partner and also it's a bit expensive when you live in the city.



Anyway, rock climbing is a sport for which teenagers are the most suited. One of the greatest, albeit aging, stars of rock climbing today is 18-year old David Lama. His parents met in Nepal, where his dad worked as a sherpa and his Austrian mum was mountaineering. They fell in love, and settled in his mum's home country, where they continued to trek on mountains together. When David was born, they soon noticed that he liked climbing around on rocks more than trekking, so they put him in a rock climbing class at the tender age of six.

The rest is, as they say, history. Here David does some tricky bouldering at a competition in Birmingham, 2007:

Both photos in this post are by Rainer Eder. The first one is from David Lama's official website, and the second one is from an interview at Climb and More.

Furthermore, here is a clip from Malaysia (in German and English) - David Lama and a few others among today's top ten rock climbers were invited to the country to explore the rock formations and build new routes (for future rock climbing tourists). Probably for some sexist reason there is hardly any focus at all on the girls, but at least the boys are cute.

Someone who has been around a little bit longer is Serik Kazbekov, 38. He was born in Alma-Ata, but is nowadays competing for Ukraine.



Here is a gallery of photos with Kazbekov (and his daughter with insanely long hair) climbing in the Crimea, by Anna Piunova. Here is his profile at Risk Online.



Serik Kazbekov actually got into rock climbing because of fellow Alma-Ata local Salavat Rakhmetov, who nowadays climbs for Russia. This "ancient" 41 year old family father is still among the world's top climbers! Salavat was introduced to rock climbing by his older brother Kairat, after which he, in his own words, "stopped running 'horizontally' and started running 'vertically' instead". Up until then he had been a professional in light athletics.

In the following video he wins 1st place in bouldering in the rock climbing world championships in Munich 2005.