12 January 2019

No Olympics for Alex Puccio

Alex Puccio, who won the only WC she did 2018, has decided to not go for Tokyo 2020. As most of her competitors will also train Speed and Lead, getting worse in Bouldering, there is a golden opportunity to win both the World Cup and the WCH, everyone focusing on the Olympics the two coming years.

Long post! Over the past 5-6 months I have been consistently thinking about the direction I want to take in my climbing career and where my heart truly lies. The decision I was faced with is to try or not to try for the Olympics. Mentally this has been very though for me, going back and forth with my thoughts. At first I said โ€œYES, I want to try!โ€ BUT then after some time I kept feeling like I maybe didnโ€™t want to go down that road. I started to realize that I wanted to push for the Olympics because it sounded pretty cool and that I had always done competitions so I might as well. But then I stared to listen to my heart and mind a bit more and realized that I wasnโ€™t really into training for Speed and Lead. I still love competing, BUT I also LOVE climbing outside! I truly believe that if I was going to make the push for the Olympics then starting now I wouldnโ€™t be able to climb outside that much this year, maybe a few days here and there. And then if you made the Olympic Team it would be another 6 months on top of that. This is because you would have to train your a** off for all 3 disciplines. If the Olympic format was individual disciplines then I would have loved to try for it! I strongly believe that the main reason I have had such a long competition career and still going is because for the past 4 years I mainly climb outside and a couple weeks before a comp Iโ€™ll go in the gym to practice some comp style boulders. It has been working for me physically and most importantly MENTALLY! :) Iโ€™m just about 30 years old and I donโ€™t feel like taking up another discipline, speed, and giving up my LOVE for climbing outside for such a long time. Sure, if someone handed me a ticket to the Olympics I would LOVE to go and it would be so much fun I bet, but thatโ€™s not how it works. Lol

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