Just four years ago, Sarah Larcombe embraced rock climbing for the first time.

The Australian paraclimbing champion — who has gone on to represent the country across the globe and win at World Cups — said it was something that she wished she had done sooner.

“Being up high on a climbing wall is the best feeling. It is so freeing,” Larcombe said.

“Climbing is actually the perfect adaptive sport. I really wish that I started climbing when I was younger.

“I really feel like there are things that I can do up on a climbing wall that I can’t do on the ground: The way that you can move your body and that freeing feeling is just nothing like you can experience anywhere else.”

However, it has been far from easy.

Throughout high school, Larcombe wanted to fit in and struggled to come to terms with living with a disability.

Despite being an amputee her entire life and using a prosthetic right leg, the AL2 climber describes her journey as taking “a really long time to get there”.

“When I was a kid, I was a tree climber. We had a massive pear tree in my backyard, and I just lived in that tree,” she said.

“Sometimes, you just wake up, and you decide, ‘I just really wish I had two legs today. It would just make my life so much easier.'”

Pressure of feeling valued

Larcombe said it came down to a conscious decision one day to move on from living with a disability, to become happy with her body, and to want to be a role model who her younger self could have looked up to.

Feeling pushed towards taking up sport in her teens, swimming was her first choice, until she gave it up after tiring of endless laps on the line.

“There are a lot of amazing sporting programs for disabled kids, and I feel so lucky to have been a part of them,” Larcombe said.

“But, growing up, it really did seem that the only way that you could be valued as a disabled person in Australia was to be successful in sports.

Funding crisis for athletes on the big stage

Australia’s paraclimbing team is assisted by the network of Adaptive Climbing Victoria, a key component in enabling the team to succeed overseas.

Although a bid has been put in for paraclimbing to be a sport at the Los Angeles Paralympics in 2028, there is still some way to go.

Currently, Sport Climbing is an event for athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympics, but the funding models do not align for paraclimbing to become a Paralympic sport.

With the Olympics and Paralympics run as separate organisations, para-athletes like Larcombe have to look elsewhere for support on the world stage.

While Larcombe will return to Salt Lake City for the World Cup in May to defend her crown, in terms of support and funding for that level of competition, it does not exist.

Source
Damien Peck
ABC News