"Wall climbing is my passion, it’s a sport that makes me push my limits,” said 13-year-old Rudra Karandikar, a bronze medallist at the Asian Kids Sport Climbing Championship 2022. Based in Pune, he also dreams of winning an Olympic medal in sport climbing. He spoke to The Indian Express about his inspiring journey of overcoming personal challenges in a sport that not many know of.
Rudra and his twin sister Rukmini were born in May 2011. When he was around two-and-a-half years old, his parents, Supriya and Tejas, were concerned about his speech development. “We took him to various doctors but none of them could diagnose the real issue. They all said that he’s just a late bloomer. Finally, we ran a test on him called BERA (Brainstem Evoked Response Audiometry). And that’s when we realised that he has a hearing impairment that falls under the moderate to severe category,” said Supriya, a lawyer and academic.
“And that phase was really difficult for us. But when he went to school, we were very sure that we wanted to put him in an inclusive school. Vidya Valley was that school for us. Rudra uses hearing aids and they readily accepted him,” she added. Rudra’s parents also felt that he should take up an individual non-contact sport for development, as sports like football or basketball might cause his hearing aids to fall off. He had a natural flair for all sports, said Supriya, and initially started with gymnastics. But his school had a climbing wall and Rudra got involved in the sport as he loved the coach. Tejas, who is himself into trekking, encouraged Rudra.
Sport climbing is a modern sport that has gained popularity in the last 20 years, and there are 25 million climbers in 150 countries all over the world, according to the Olympics website. It has three formats: Bouldering, Lead, and Speed. Bouldering involves climbing as many routes (known as problems) as possible in the fewest possible moves. Lead consists of climbing as high as possible in a given time limit. In Speed, two competitors are in a race and the fastest to the top wins.
Overcoming hearing impairment challenges
Rudra had to go through rigorous speech therapy sessions to learn to speak. He started group speech therapy sessions at KEM Hospital but then moved on to individual sessions. “These speech therapy sessions used a lot of visual therapy. The therapist used to show him a lot of photos and describe them to him, and also do a lot of activities with him. She also used to come up with solutions for him to learn syllables. With hearing impaired children there are certain frequencies which they hear very well and other frequencies which they don’t. He used to struggle in pronouncing S and R but now is pretty confident. He gave a speech after he won the bronze medal and it was well received,” Supriya said proudly.
In the Speed format, the beginning of the event is marked by a timer with two warning beeps and a third long beep, a sign for the participants to begin. Rudra has lost some competitions as he could not hear the beeps properly, but he has not let that discourage him. “Whenever you start the competition before the third beep, it’s a foul. At the Asians, because of the anxiety that he would not be able to hear a beep, he started early and it was a foul. So, in the next round he started two seconds after his competitor but managed to overtake him and win the bronze,” said Supriya.
The sport has also changed his life in other ways. “Earlier it was hard to make friends but climbing has helped me make friends worldwide. I even have a friend who lives in Malaysia. When you have friends, you perform better,” said Rudra. He talked about how he took inspiration from his friend Sukhu Singh, who won gold medals in two events at the first competition Rudra went to. Rudra used to worry that his height might be a disadvantage in the sport, but Sukhu inspired him to just focus on winning. Last year, he won a silver medal in an event in Malaysia and is currently preparing for a zonal competition.