RCHK’s Climbing Prodigy: Year 5 Student Scales Hong Kong Rock Climbing Record!

By Chi Yan Ng

You may have noticed that Renaissance College has recently been all over the local news platforms. This is due to the incredible achievement of Year 5 student Veronica Chik. On September 26th, Chik successfully completed the 31 meter “China Climb” in Yangshuo, Guilin, which South China Morning Post claims as one of the “toughest routes in the sport”. The climb is ranked as aRye 5.14a, meant for expert climbers– those who are very strong and often professional athletes. At 9 years and 2 months, “she is the youngest Hong Kong climber to navigate this route” in just 5 minutes and 50 seconds, thus breaking the Hong Kong record and changing history forever.

“The route has a 30 degree slope and some cracks as thin as chopsticks” states Headline Daily. It requires an average of 70 to 80 moves, but because of Chik’s smaller size and shorter length of arms and legs, more than 100 moves are required. The “China Climb” was first successfully completed by Liu Yongbang, Chik’s climbing coach, and a mere few have completed the climb thereafter.

“She started climbing at 5.5 years old”, Chik’s mother shares, and “started competing at the age of 6”. Chik has since participated in competitions internationally and achieved several remarkable feats. In particular, she recently “won the boulder-and-lead combined competition for her age category at the China National Youth Climbing Championships 2024” (South China Morning Post). But before rock climbing, Veronica Chik has also tried several other sports, including “Kung Fu black belt second dan, Taekwondo red belt, tennis, ice skating, skipping rope, equestrian, Latin dance,” but she eventually found her love for this sport. Her success definitely shows her talent and skill!

However, the journey to this point has not been easy for her. Chik and her family travel from Hong Kong to Yangshuo every weekend – a 5 hour journey each way to train under coach Liu. Her mother expresses that Chik’s hands are often “covered in calluses, her skin torn and bleeding”, and wanted her to stop climbing and perhaps switch to other sports due to the injuries and vigorous training schedule. However, Chik was determined to continue working hard towards her dreams. She did “pause her training temporarily as she faced the fear of falling from heights”, and started again only in September. To achieve so much after coming back from a break is extremely impressive.

Over the summer holidays, Chik and her family watched the 2024 Summer Olympics in-person, which greatly motivated her to continue training. This South China Morning Post article expressed that considering her rate of training and achievements, and the development of rock climbing in Hong Kong, there is a chance that Chik could compete at the 2032 Brisbane Summer Olympics.