Sasha Di Giulian: Nimble as a squirrel, ...

She's young, colorful, bubbly, extremely agile, extroverted, quick-witted and wears makeup while climbing. Her colorful fingernails are as much a part of her as her 2011 world championship title and being the only American to conquer a 9a climbing route.

by Rolf Fleckenstein

She's young and wild and one thing above all else, scurrying, especially when going uphill. "The first thing Sasha DiGiulian did in her life was climb, first out of her playpen, even before she could walk. From a very young age, she would climb on anything she could find. "When looking for Sasha, people would just say, 'look up,' and you could spot her hanging up there and climbing around," her mother says, reflecting on her daughter's life.

She is small (157 cm) and light and can amazingly stretch, bend, hold onto the wall with her fingers and hands and pull herself up as if this were her living room. Anyone watching her move around the wall is fascinated. She holds on with her fingers until she bleeds, and even then doesn't give up for a long time until she reaches her goal. Again and again she falls down, only to try again via a different route until she has conquered the wall. And she has been doing this for a lifetime now. At not even 24 years old, she seems young, and she is, but she has been climbing since she was 6 years old, her whole life, because climbing is her whole passion, climbing is her life.

In a class of its own
You wouldn't necessarily give it to her, especially because of her cheerful and informal manner, but she is a multiple American and world champion and the only American to have mastered a climbing difficulty grade of 9a (French difficulty scale 1-9b). At the age of 14, she already won her first American championship title in the discipline "Lead" in Denver/Colorado, which she repeated two years later in Montreal, Canada. In 2011, she won the silver medal in the "Bouldering" discipline at the World Championships in Arco, Italy. Thanks to an 8th place in the discipline "Lead" and the 52nd place in the discipline "Speed" she won the world championship title across all disciplines. Between 2010 and 2012, she also took several victories of the Pan-American Championship and the National Championship. Since 2011, she can be seen rock climbing on challenging routes, ranging in difficulty from 8b - 9a. Difficulty grades between 8a to 8b mean that the climbing routes are "very difficult" and are reserved for top athletes who require several days to several weeks of preparation, including trying out the route, to master the route. Routes with difficulty grades 8c and higher are "unimaginably difficult" and represent the current limit of the world's climbing elite, which only a handful of climbers around the world can master. Given this impressive performance requirement, one really has to take one's hat off to her. In 2011 and 2012 in particular, she completed the most demanding climbs in Magalef, Spain, Maple Canyon, South Africa, or Red River Gorge, a canyon in Kentucky, USA. On November 15, 2011, at Red River Gorge, she mastered the tour "Pure Imagination" with 9a difficulty on an overhanging wall, which was later downgraded to 8c. In April 2012, she definitely conquered this hurdle when she mastered the tour "Era Vella" in Magalef, Spain, with difficulty grade 9a. She is the only North American woman who has ever successfully climbed such a difficulty. It is therefore not without reason that she is currently considered the best outdoor climber in the world.

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