Sport Climbing, which will make its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, is a sport that requires extreme strength in one of the smallest parts of a human – the fingertips. Athletes have to use just their bare hands and climbing shoes to scale up a vertical wall.

For Shivani Charak, the sport she competes in is almost a metaphor for her life so far. Using her limited resources, she has looked to scale obstacles that seem much higher for an 18-year-old from Jammu and Kashmir.

In a way, the wall of sport climbing is just another obstacle on her climb towards success in an unlikely career choice in a sport largely unknown in India.

The teenager survived cancer at the age of nine and then went on to pick a physically strenuous sport, becoming the top-ranked woman sport climber in India in a span of few years. Her most significant triumph has been the junior women’s bronze in speed climbing at the Asian Youth Championship in December.

For Charak, who has been a national champion in the past, this was her first taste of an international triumph. “The Asian Youth Championship 2019 was happening in India for the first time and I trained in Bhubaneshwar and Bangalore for it. I am glad I was able to win my first international medal at home,” Charak told Scroll.in.

The year 2019 has been crucial for Charak as she starts to test herself in international competitions on a regular basis and the medal is a result of this.

In the past few months, she participated at the IFSC ACC Asian Championship 2019 in Indonesia, where she finished 22nd as well as the Asian Combined Youth Championships in China, before winning a bronze at the Youth Championship.

Initially, she was unsure if she will be able to take part in the competitions because of financial concerns. “Playing those tournaments was very important because the experience I got there helped me finally win a medal. I would not have been able had I not played abroad,” she added. She is currently supported through the Welspun Super Sport Women Program.

Beating cancer as a child

But the teen’s first challenge in the sport she picked was her own physical weakness. Charak’s entry to the sport was unconventional given she chose to go climb walls in her native Jammu right after cancer therapy. Her older sister, Shilpa, was a sport climber and Shivani longed to join her but was not allowed to initially, till her insistence forced her father to relent.

“I came to know I have ovarian cancer in 2009 and my treatment was on till the start of 2013. When I started climbing, the operation and treatment was still recent. My family was initially reluctant but my father has never said no to me for anything and eventually supported this decision as well after consulting with my doctor. The doctor said ‘she is fine but has to stop if there is any pain in the area,’” she recounted.

“It was, of course, difficult to begin because I used to feel very weak but I got around it eventually,” Charak, who started from climbing a four metre wall at a school in Jammu, added.

Charak would literally go on to surmount bigger heights. She was selected for a state level tournament and progressed to the national level, and then international, becoming the most successful climber in the family where all four children are competing in the same sport. In fact, it is the support of her younger brothers that continues to be one of her biggest driving forces.

“My older sister would not take me for climbing because she wanted me to rest after the operation. But, I have two younger brothers and I persuaded them and they finally agreed. They would take me there and help me. They never told me that ‘you can’t do this or that’ instead encouraged me, and I was able to do this,” Charak said.

The twins, Arun and Ajay, are two years younger than her and are currently ranked second and third at the national level. To this day, they accompany her to competitions, doubling up as coaches even though they are climbers themselves and participating in most of the events she goes to.

Although she has trained internationally in Switzerland, Italy and Slovenia with the Indian team ahead of big events, there are few international-standard walls for training in India and ends up spending most of her time away from home.

This is where the Army’s sport climbing team comes in – one of her favorite stories about climbing. While Charak is not part of the Army, their team is now her extended family after a chance meeting at a competition.

“In Delhi, there is the Army team training and sometimes I train with them. With them I feel like I am training with my older brothers, they support me in every way, even giving up the wall or waiting extra if I want to train for longer,” she described her experiences in lively tones.

“The team and their coach explain to me the things I don’t know and help me with technicalities and guide me during practice, even though I don’t have a personal coach. If I have to travel at night, they make sure they are dropping me to the destination. They make me feel like I am away from home,” she said.

The enthusiasm Charak has for training is tempered by the realistic assessment of where she stands. She could not go to several Tokyo Olympics qualifying events but thinks there is an outside chance at qualifying for the last continental competition early next year. However, her long-term focus is on the 2022 Asian Games and has definitely made a positive move in that direction with this medal.