ASHIMA SHIRAISHI "Weightless"
Ask Ashima Shiraishi why she loves rock climbing and she’ll say it’s an art. Using all her muscles, not just her upper or lower body, requires a grace of movement and a mindfulness not matched by other sports.
Fear never seems to be a factor for her. “I feel safer on the rock than I do on the ground,” said the 16-year-old, who fell in love with the sport at Rat Rock, Central Park’s unofficial gathering place for climbers. “When I’m climbing, I’m in this bubble,” she said. “I’m totally focused on going to the top.”
Shiraishi broke her first world record at age 8, becoming the youngest person ever to scale a V10 boulder (difficulty is rated from V0 to V17). More records followed, and in March 2015, when she was 14, she became the youngest female to conquer a V15 boulder. She’s currently ranked eighth in the world among women rock climbers, some of whom are almost twice her age. It’s no surprise that she has attracted a long list of high-wattage sponsors: Clif Bar, Coca-Cola, Japan Airlines, Nikon, The North Face and Evolv, a sporting-goods company that in January launched the Ashima, a climbing shoe designed to Shiraishi’s exact specifications.
For all her success in the great outdoors, Shiraishi trains mostly in the city. Five days a week, after she wraps up at the Professional Children’s School, where she’s a junior, she hits climbing walls in Brooklyn or Queens for four-hour sessions. As for the future, competitive climbing will make its debut as an Olympic sport at the 2020 Tokyo Games, and although it’s too early to start training for the trials, Shiraishi is already dreaming big.
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Brett Lowell, www.bigupproductions.com
EDITOR: Robin Haman, The Assembly Reps
PRODUCER: Barry Heaps