Grace Crowley (AUS) qualified to the World Games

Grace Crowley from Australia was the only female participant from Oceania in the World Championship 2021 in Moscow. This should mean she will get the Oceania quota to participate in the World Games in Birmingham (USA) 14-16/7 in Speed and Boulder, as the Continental Championship was cancelled. There will be 12 + 12 athletes competing in all three disciplines. Grace did her first Speed World Cup in 2019 at age 15. Last year she was #29 in Moscow with just a couple of months of Speed training after more than a one year break due to Covid-19. (c) Yvette Harrison

Have you already got the invitation to the World Games?
I haven’t gotten my invitation yet but hopefully soon, I intend to be there this summer (assuming I’ve read the rules correctly and do get the invitation).

Could you please say something about your climbing background?
I started climbing late 2015 when a family friend took me to a local gym in Montana where I lived at the time. I was pretty much immediately obsessed. At the beginning of 2017 I moved to Australia and started in a youth club with a coach who suggested I try competing at an upcoming competition and I’ve been competing since then. In 2019 I made the Australian team in speed climbing and competed at a few world cups and world championships. In 2020 and 2021 I qualified for the Australian team in Boulder and speed. Right now I’m focused on a lot of off season training, I’m training bouldering and speed and I set boulders at a local gym once a week. I’m just training and working to get ready for the upcoming World Cup season where I’ll go overseas for a few months. I’m 18, turning 19 this year (so still a youth competitor) though I haven’t been to a youth world championships yet.

How has Covid-19 affected your training? Have you climbed outdoors?
Covid 19 was really hard on my training, especially last year. I live in Melbourne which has gone through months and months of strict lockdown, luckily the national team athletes based in Melbourne were able to get work permits from the government and a gym that allowed them to train. But it was very limited access and only a bouldering gym, so I wasn’t able to continue my speed training for most of 2020 and nearly half of 2021. It’s also had a huge effect of my competitions as our Australian borders have been shut until just recently so flights in and out were extremely expensive and to leave or enter the country you had to apply for an exemption with the government.

I don’t climb outside, I’d like to but I haven’t had the chance yet.

Could you please say something about how much and how you train?
I train five days a week, three speed sessions and four bouldering sessions and some sort of training on each of those days after my climbing, it all adds up to between 20-30 hours a week. I do my bouldering sessions with other people but all of my speed sessions are on my own as there isn’t anyone else in Melbourne that climbs speed right now so 6-8 hours are alone for my climbing and most of my training outside of climbing is done alone.

What is your PB in Speed in competition and in training?
My Speed PB is currently 10.41. I don’t have a timing system in the gym in Melbourne and I train alone so there isn’t anyone that can use a stopwatch or anything so I haven’t been able to time myself in an accurate way since coming back to Australia so I really never know until I compete.