Scots teen Hamilton has climbed to the top of her game and America training trip is the next step
Whether you’ve been competing in sport for a year or your entire life, often the difference between the elite and the average is fearlessness and a will to win.
Despite being just 17 years old, Ava Hamilton has both in abundance.
Having started climbing aged just seven, the former Kelvinside Academy pupil is now 10 years into her journey within the sport and is already at the speed climbing summit, breaking the UK record for a female speed climber at the European Championships earlier this year with a time of 8.64 seconds, almost a second faster than the previous best.
But the path was not always in speed climbing. Hamilton actually began as a seven-year-old bouldering, the more systematic version of climbing before making the transition to speed climbing, which made its Olympic debut at Tokyo in 2021, just two years ago.
Already at the peak of speed climbing, where athletes aim to ascend 15metres as quickly as possible, on these shores, Hamilton already has her sights set on the next Olympics, in Los Angeles in 2028. She knows, however, that the path there will be far from straightforward.
Currently working two jobs to help fund her training, as well as receiving £2,000 from the Gordon Brown memorial fund, the Renfrewshire teen will travel to Salt Lake City, Utah, to work with renowned coach Albert Ok, who trains Olympians Sam Watson and Piper Kelly, later this month for a three-month training camp.
Hamilton broke the long-standing British speed climbing record earlier this year
Despite being just 17, leaving her friends and family behind to travel to the other side of the world is the natural step for Hamilton.
‘The main focus there is to use the facilities, get a lot of on-the-wall training and improve my technique and stuff like that,’ she says. ‘My coach is Albert Ok. The whole American team are based there. I’m going for three months, just for training. It’s not a training camp, more an independent decision. I’m not going with the team, it’s just me, I’m going over there. I don’t have the coaching or facilities here so I’m going there to the US. It just has to be done.
‘I’m in Glasgow and the wall is over at the climbing wall in Ratho, just outside Edinburgh, so I’m only able to get there maybe twice a week if I’m lucky. So I’m spending a lot of time in the gym, building a really good foundation for power to transfer it on to the wall.
‘I am kind of scared to go over to Salt Lake City. But I’m more excited than anything to be honest.
‘We’re still waiting to find out the qualification pathways for the next Olympics, which will make a big difference in how realistic it’ll be. We’re optimistic, I’m really hoping to be at the highest level but, this year, there were only 14 spaces for female and male in speed climbing for the whole world. It was a quote of two per country. Hopefully they’ll raise that for the next one, that seems logical.
‘It’s going to be really hard but I like to think I have the ability to do it if I put four years of training into it.’
While the teenager may be both excited and scared to travel to the States to get the best training on offer, there has never been any fear when it comes to tackling the wall.
Though the chances of physical injury are low in climbing due to the safety equipment, Hamilton admits that the scars are more mental than anything.
Hamilton spends the majority of her time training at the International Climbing Arena, just outside Edinburgh
‘There’s never been any physical fears for me,’ she admits. ‘I’ve been climbing for so long, I don’t think any of the athletes are scared of heights or anything like that. In bouldering, falling is a bigger thing but in speed climbing it’s more just the competitive aspect. If you do slip or fall, it’s the consequences that are the scary part, it’s not the action of falling.
‘It’s pretty hard to hurt yourself on a speed wall too, compared to other disciplines. You’re really safe up there, so it is just the consequences.
‘If you fall off, you’re done. If you false start, you’re done. It’s the fear of coming all this way, doing all the training and it can all be over so quickly. That’s the scary part.’
A competitor in both disciplines, Hamilton is perfectly placed when it comes to weighing in on the debate over which style requires more skill.
Having spent the majority of her life on the climbing walls of Glasgow and Ratho, Hamilton reveals feels that there is no real comparison.
‘It’s such a debate between climbers which style is tougher,’ she says. ‘Speed climbing and bouldering are so technical in different ways.
‘In bouldering, you have to think on the spot. You’ve never seen that boulder before, that route before and you need to work that out as you go. You use all your experience doing other things but it’s the complete opposite in speed climbing – you’ve done the route a million times before, it’s just trying to get that as fast as possible. Speed is practising the same thing every time and it’s technical because you’re trying to get it down to the exact millimetre, body position and things.
The teenager has experience in both bouldering and speed climbing but is making waves in the latter
‘When I started speed climbing, making the transition from bouldering competitions into speed, I was doing it a lot of on-wall training and I was able to transfer the power and strength from that directly on to the speed wall.
‘I did actively try to learn the sequences and stuff like that, and it wasn’t completely new water to me. But when I really focused on it, I got good quite fast and then it plateaued for a long time. I never broke my first PB for over a year.’
