2023-10-27 18:00:17
ManresaBerta Martín looks up to see if everything is in order on the climbing wall. The jacks, the strings… Everything seems in place. Geila Macià is right behind him, stretching. Once he finishes them, he hangs himself from a dam, but quickly descends. “My shoulder is a bit heavy,” he complains. Normal, at 15 years old, this young woman from Sant Martí de Tous is living a dream season: she is winning a lot of titles at international level. On the day that ARA visited her at the Indoorwall facilities in Manresa, she had just returned from winning the European Championship in difficulty mode, the last international competition of the season. When you ask him about everything he has earned in recent months, he has to memorize. From afar, Berta listens to him. She is not only his coach, she is also his mother. And in large part, one of the people responsible for Catalan climbing being able to take off with this ambitious young woman. A Spanish climber had never won a medal in a World Cup. Until Geila arrived.
A girl who could have chosen other paths but seemed destined to climb. The mother was already a climber. He competed and always had his hands with the smell of magnesia that climbers put on their fingers to better hold onto rock outcroppings or climbing wall holds. “We are a family that likes to climb,” explains Geila. The father is Israel Macià, who also climbed and came to be in charge of the Catalan Federation. Years ago, Israel rented a small warehouse to install a climbing wall. From that adventure was born a business that continues to grow, Indoorwall climbing walls, present in many Catalan cities and with its own climbing team to compete at international level.
Geila, of course, competes federated for this team, always under the watchful eye of Berta, who took her daughter to train when she competed years ago. “I started by accompanying my mother because the way I was born she already took me to training and tournaments. And I was hanging from places, like a game. It was a hobby. But then, as I got older, I started to take it more seriously, so I signed up for a competition,” he recalls. It was the first test. And how did Geila go? Well, bad. “I’m very competitive and I took it very badly. I didn’t do well with the results and I said I would never compete again. I made it clear that I would leave climbing. I’ve always been like that, I have my character. I’m the ones who can’t lose even in board games. So I quit climbing, but since mom was still competing and I was going to see her… inside I felt like I needed to go back. But this time I had to train “I feel better,” he explains. And he competed again. It was the second attempt. And he won. “And when you win, you find even more motivation to keep going. That’s how I started to see that I could dedicate myself to climbing,” he argues. Now he has a house full of medals and he is only 15 years old.
This season, Geila has won gold medals in the European Cup, both in block and difficulty. In the block mode, you climb a low wall, four meters high, with mattresses to control falls. The sockets are positioned in a way that requires a deployment of elasticity. In difficulty mode, you have to climb higher walls and secure your position with ropes. Whoever reaches the highest in the best time wins. “At first I thought I was more in control of the difficulty mode, but now I like both,” says Geila, who has also won medals at the European championships. The icing on the cake was his participation in the World Junior Championships in Seoul, when he won silver in the block event and bronze in difficulty. Right now, the best young climber in Europe is her, a girl from Sant Martí de Tous, in Anoia. And one of the best on the planet.
Geila has only been competing internationally for a few years, but things have been going well for her. “It was a challenge, since the year of the debut I was coming off an injury and I was sad about the death of my dog. Also, I didn’t know the rivals at all. It was a mystery, how could I compete. In the block mode I didn’t it went very well, but in difficulty I made a podium which encouraged me a lot”, he remembers. This year, without injuries, with more experience and a good pre-season, he climbed the climbing walls faster than ever, in both modalities. And everything, combining it with studies. “I go to Escola Pia in Igualada and they have helped me. They let me adapt some schedules to travel and training, they validated my physical education… With the adapted schedules I can manage both things well”, he defends.
The Dallas scare
In 2022, when she was 14 years old, Geila already qualified for the Youth World Championships, which were held in Dallas, in the United States. It had to be a test and an adventure, an experience to remember. And he will remember her forever, but not because things went well. “Well, it turns out that in the middle of the flight I had an attack of appendicitis. It was horrible. And it was a flight from Barcelona to Montreal. There I had to take a second flight where I got on already in pain. All in all, I ended up four days in a hospital from Dallas. My appendix had exploded,” he says with a laugh. He doesn’t lose his sense of humor. “Now that I’m over it, I can go to the moon if I have to,” he adds.
If Dallas ended up in a hospital, in 2023 the world cup in Seoul ended up on the podium. “I was super excited, but also quite scared, because it was my first World Championship and I didn’t know who my rivals were. I remember that before I went out to compete in the qualifying rounds I was very nervous, crying, wanting to throw up. But what did I have to lose? So once I started competing I had a great time,” she says. The result, a silver and a bronze. And euphoria for the Spanish delegation, where they are already looking towards a future that could include scholarships for Geila, since climbing has been Olympic since the last Olympic Games. “When we found out that climbing was going to be Olympic, the first thing I did was see if I could make it in time to compete in the 2024 Games. But no, I’ll be too young. So the idea is to try to compete to be in the Los Angeles Games of 2028. Trying to be in Paris would have been too hard, I don’t have the body of the 24-year-old women. I still have a lot of work to do. Also, the idea is to move up to compete in the senior category next season, as at 16 years you can make the jump. So I would arrive with little experience.”
The date that Geila has in mind, then, is 2028. As it is burning stages, one can be optimistic. “Sometimes before competing I seem to be nervous, but once I start climbing I am very focused”, admits this young woman who would never have imagined, when she accompanied her mother to the tournaments, that she might one day be an Olympian. Although at the moment she prefers to touch the ground. Except when climbing the climbing wall. When it does, it flies. And enjoy
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