The Olympic Qualifiers - It All Comes Down To This | The Outsider Ep.4

The gynecologist told me yesterday, forget your foot, it's okay, it's repaired. You don't have to be afraid anymore, you have to go. It's really, I feel like I can turn a page of the injury chapter. Three months after the OQS, it was time. And she was like this kid in a playground. She was so happy all of a sudden. Yeah, and then she got injured again. So after a couple of months of dealing with an ankle injury, Swana was really ready to move on. I'm leaving the next day to Milano to have a training camp with judo. And I'm so excited about it. We're exactly three months and a half before the first OQS in Shanghai. It's not a lot, but it's definitely enough to get back to proper training and be ready. I was like, oh God, no, this can't be happening. Like I've seen Swana with a lot of injuries already, but like that back to back, it really felt a bit too much. I felt so guilty and ashamed and heartbroken. You can't even handle yourself. You're destroying your body all the time and you never learn from your mistakes. Like an injury is never a nice way to stop you from a goal, from achieving a goal. It like kind of cuts you short and feels like you haven't been able to give everything. And I really felt that she gave up for a second. That's where judo really helped me. Without question, she gave up. She had to finish the adventure. No regrets, no excuses. And that helped me so much because at that moment, if I would have felt even like a tiny bit of doubt coming from him, I think it would have been the end. It only took like half a day or something. Like over the next morning, she was like, OK, I'm back to positive. Sorry, we can do this. Like, Ludo is with me. I know you're with me. So let's just keep going. Let's find a way. I'm in again. So I invite you to sit down, to close your eyes. And you see a blonde girl, dressed in an Olympic-style outfit. And she's ready to fight. She does the re-education perfectly at a second-rate level, because she's still very well-educated and, in any case, very motivated. I was climbing with three fingers taped. She did everything open-handed. So she could work in a way where she would grab, like, bigger holds, focus much more on core and upper body strength again. Stop! She was surprised that she could actually do something. I never stopped climbing with a torn pulley, which is honestly quite cool. We really tried to, like, adapt the training. It worked out pretty well, actually. So at one point, I kind of had expected it already. She kind of had this little mental breakdown. I woke up this morning and I felt like I was in the process of going down again. I'm angry and I tell myself that it's not fair. And it's very weird to deal with this anger as an emotion. Even if you're super well-surrounded, you always feel alone in an injury. And in the end, it's up to you to deal with it yourself. No one can do it for you. You have to be patient, I think. It's the basis of the injury. I also told her, like, go take a break. Like, go do something else. That's really important. It's very important for every athlete where you have these ups and downs of motivation, especially during injuries. It's a struggle. It's important to accept that and to really give yourself a break every now and then. She's very good at coming back out of these, like, little dips of motivation. She took maybe a week where she did a little bit less training and then she was back to psyched again. Look how happy she is. Yes! Good. Nice, come on. I started crimping again one month before the OQS. You're going to go on a hike. I could do it for a month. I'm really happy about the work we did with Ludo and Jorg during this month of the pulley injury. And I think that was important for Swan to realise at one point, OK, I made gains. Like, looking back on the entire year of preparation that we had, I was very satisfied with it. Fit biceps. So before the OQS, I guess it's hard to feel ready when you've had to learn so many different things. Like, I went from 10 years of rock climbing to one year, basically, of just plastic training. Considering this, I think, yeah, I was feeling as ready as I could have been. And everything is going so fast. She's barely climbing properly that we have to go to Japan first for about 15 days to be able to set a time gap. We both have a lot of trouble setting a time gap. I kind of felt like Japan was a mistake. I had the feeling that her motivation was going down a little bit. Like, I think she was even a little bit lonely. It's also a bit overwhelming, in a way, because you're far from home, you're on a different time zone than your friends. Yeah, it's not easy all the time, of course. I've been better. I just spent two days feeling not so well because of food poisoning. I went to the gym today to train a bit of bouldering and got a massive flap around my big toe, which is really stupid and actually really painful. So, yeah, I don't know. I just kind of feel that the climbing gods just don't want me in Japan. So all this stuff that makes you feel not confident at all, it kind of destroyed everything I had put in place before, which obviously is not true. Like, you don't train for a competition the two weeks before. You've been doing this work for a whole year. I think I was really on the verge of breaking down. Stress kind of spirals you into negativity very often. What really helped me is talking to my mental coach, obviously, but also to my friends, to my family, to Jorg. The mental of the competition is no longer there. I reminded her how cool it is to actually be at the OQS. And it made me feel a bit better. And, like, everything changed that day because I felt amazing while climbing. I was having so much fun. And it was two days before the comp. So I was like, nice, better late than never. Flying to Shanghai, I felt amazing. Hello! Well, first of all, it's a really massive event. And it's huge. It's part of the Olympics. It's the Olympic qualifier series for four different sports. I felt a bit stressed when I arrived there. But at the same time, it was extremely exciting because of the same reasons. The third boulder, she did the job she had to do. I don't think she could have done better. She did the five points in a flash, so that's great. And the last boulder, on the other hand, it's one of those last boulders where she doesn't take off. I think she's super frustrated because she feels like she's mutated and there's so little missing for her to be able to express herself in all the boulders. The lead qualification started and I quickly saw that the route was kind of way too hard. Very strong climbers were falling very early on. And I saw her climb and it was the same as bouldering. She started off very well. And I thought, okay, it's going to go super well. And then all of a sudden she struggles. I think I panicked a bit because it was much harder than what I was expecting. And I couldn't do a clip. So, like I said, I panicked and then I was a bit stuck. And then my heel slipped because I think I was not that focused anymore. I'm doing my warm-up reaction to this first stage of the Olympic qualification. Yeah, it's super frustrating to know that you're stronger than that and that you can give a lot more and not be able to transfer it from training to the competition the day after. But that's what it's like to be a good competitor. It's knowing how to be strong at the time of the competition. This feeling of frustration leads to another feeling. It's my feeling of being a bit of a warrior that makes me want to fight even more. There was a little moment just after the dip where I told myself that what I'm doing is useless. I can't do it. I just can't do it. It was a very fictitious moment. And now I'm still super motivated and I'm going back to Budapest for four weeks of training. I felt so grateful to have this opportunity and to be able to live this. And like in 10 years from now, when I will talk about it, I think I will feel so proud now because it's something not everybody is going to live. It felt amazing to be there. I was really happy. And I was really looking forward to the second OQS because I knew what I was going to have to work on. Budapest goal, training. I hope it's going to be hot because we're going to attack. I'm beyond happy to do this. I love it so much, really.