In celebration of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, GLAMOUR has launched Change The Record, a series dedicated to the women of Team GB, who are flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite female athlete, from competing on their periods, balancing training with pregnancy and motherhood, navigating body image pressures, and yes, chasing world records.
Here, we chat with Molly Thompson-Smith, a world-class climber preparing for her first Olympics, about the importance of representation, how women are pushing the boundaries of climbing, and why she's calling out racism and microaggressions in sport.
GLAMOUR: Hi Molly! Congratulations on qualifying for your first Olympic games! How are you feeling?
Molly Thompson-Smith: I'm so excited! And slightly less overwhelmed than I was just after I qualified – it's starting to sink in. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity – it has been a dream of mine since I was a tiny girl.
Can you remember the first time you learned about climbing and realised it was something you could turn into a career?
I was a super sporty kid when I was younger, and my brother was too… We had sporty parents and we were just always doing stuff with them, and we were always encouraged to have a sports birthday party when we were younger, so we'd choose a different sport every year.
When I was seven, I decided to try climbing, and I was hooked from the get-go and didn't really care how my friends were doing at that party. I was just so in love with this new sport. I remember just begging my parents to let me go back, and then I joined the club and progressed from there.
And what is it about climbing in particular that you love?
Climbing is like a sport that sometimes doesn't feel like it's a sport. It can be anything you need it to be whenever you need it to be. So there are times when I text a friend like, ‘Oh, do you want to go to the [climbing] wall?’ And we'll go to the wall, and we'll do a bit of climbing, but we'll mainly sit and drink coffee and chill… It's just a nice social thing.
Or there are times when I want to try really hard, and I want to be by myself, and it can feel like a workout. But yeah, there are times when it is just such a mental challenge, and either I really need to concentrate, or I can feel that my brain's not there that day, and it's really hard to figure out the solution to the problem that's in front of me.
In 2022, you suffered a serious ankle injury. How did that affect your relationship with climbing? And what have you done – physically and mentally – to get back to your optimum fitness?
It was such a shock. This was the first injury that really changed my life. I couldn't walk, obviously, I couldn't drive, I couldn't do anything for myself. I was totally dependent on the people around me. And for a while, climbing wasn't even on my radar. There were just so many other things that I wanted to do first, but injuries always taught me how important climbing is to me and how I couldn't imagine a life without climbing.
Obviously, getting fit for the Paris Olympics was the main goal, but having all of these smaller goals that I could actually achieve in the meantime and refining the joy and love that climbing could bring to my life was such a rewarding experience, and I don't regret any of it and totally gave me the fire I needed to qualify for Paris.
Have you always had such a strong mindset? Do the people around you encourage you to take the positives from adversity?
The people around me have helped shape who I am and helped me get through these experiences. I was lucky to have a really supportive partner who was there through the whole process. And then my parents have always been involved in my sporting career and have picked me back up any time I got knocked down. I'm so grateful for these people because they've seen the good, they've seen the bad, and they've reminded me of my ‘why’, which I think is the most important thing.
And what would you say is your 'why'?
My “why” is the way that climbing makes me feel about myself, but also the opportunities it brings to change other people's lives. When I qualified for the Olympics, I realised I would have a platform to actually act on the things that I'm really passionate about, which are diversity and inclusion within climbing.
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You've spoken a bit before about how there aren't many Black athletes in climbing. Is that especially true for Black women?
Yeah, definitely. We had two black athletes at the Tokyo Olympics, which was incredible, but they are the only two black athletes on the circuit. And I have one teammate who's also mixed race like I am. And we've been mistaken for each other so many times even though our racial backgrounds are nothing alike.
I've always said it's really hard to be what you can't see, and climbing just doesn't have a diverse set of role models. I always struggle when people ask me, who are your role models in climbing? Because when I started, there weren't any for me. And I looked outside of climbing to Dame Kelly Holmes and Jessica Ennis because they were the women that I felt like I could really connect with.
And as a little girl, I was like, I want to be like them because they look like me. They sound like me. I can see myself in them. And so I think that visibility is definitely a problem within climbing. And hopefully that changes with platforms like the Olympics.
What would you say to women, perhaps Black women in particular, who want to try climbing but don't know where to start?
Climbing is not a perfect sport yet, and it's by no means completely equal in terms of gender, but I think there are lots of parts of climbing which are encouraging for female athletes, such as women's competitions being held at the same time and receiving the same viewership and prize money is the same.
It's also an incredible sport because women are pushing the boundaries of climbing full stop, not just women's climbing, which is really, really cool. And I think that climbing walls and climbers are making an effort to make spaces more inclusive for women. There are lots of women's only climbing sessions and community groups that are trying to make it more comfortable for women.
Hopefully, seeing climbing at the Olympics will inspire women to get down to their local climbing wall or even try climbing outside.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
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