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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Olympic Speed Climbing Champion Sam Watson to Visit Mumbai

Mumbai: When Sam Watson sprints up a 15-metre wall, the world seems to slow down. The 19-year-old American speed climber, an Olympic medallist from Paris 2024 and current world-record holder at 4.64 seconds, has become the face of one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. On November 2, he will trade competition arenas for Mumbai’s High Rock in Powai, offering a rare day of workshops and conversations with India’s burgeoning community of climbers. Speed climbing, once a fringe pursuit of...

Olympic Speed Climbing Champion Sam Watson to Visit Mumbai

Mumbai: When Sam Watson sprints up a 15-metre wall, the world seems to slow down. The 19-year-old American speed climber, an Olympic medallist from Paris 2024 and current world-record holder at 4.64 seconds, has become the face of one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. On November 2, he will trade competition arenas for Mumbai’s High Rock in Powai, offering a rare day of workshops and conversations with India’s burgeoning community of climbers. Speed climbing, once a fringe pursuit of mountaineers, now stands as one of the Olympics’ most electrifying disciplines. The sport demands not just power and agility but precision measured in hundredths of a second. Watson, often hailed as the greatest speed climber of all time, has repeatedly rewritten the record books. His visit marks a milestone for India’s fledgling climbing scene. High Rock, the city’s first commercial climbing facility, opened its walls in December 2024 and has since drawn more than 10,000 enthusiasts. It represents the country’s growing fascination with vertical sports and a reflection of a global shift toward adventure and athleticism fused with technology and training science. During his visit, Sam Watson will conduct Masterclasses for both Kids and Adults, offering a rare opportunity for amateur climbers to learn directly from a global champion and experience his unmatched energy and technique up close. Watson will be joined by Matt Groom, the Official Lead Commentator for the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC). Known as the voice of IFSC World Cups and World Championships, Groom will host a 30-minute talk at High Rock on ‘The Evolution of Climbing in Competitive Sport.’ His insights promise to provide a deep look into the transformation of climbing from niche adventure to Olympic spectacle. Event: Sam Watson, Olympic Medalist and current World Record holder at High Rock Date: November 2, 2025 Location: High Rock, Powai, Mumbai

Metro Myopia

For the first time in nearly two decades, estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray shared a stage in Mumbai, reviving the ghosts of Shiv Sena past and hinting at a new saffron alignment. The event, which was purportedly a rally to assert Marathi pride, carried the unmistakable scent of electoral opportunism. As much as the Thackeray duo wrapped themselves in the Marathi manoos’ cause, the subtext was loud and unmistakable: Mumbai matters most. Maharashtra, meanwhile, remains a footnote in their vision.


To give the cousins their due, the rollback of the Mahayuti government’s ill-conceived plan to mandate Hindi as a third language in primary schools did warrant scrutiny. The fact that the decision was quietly withdrawn is testament to the linguistic anxieties that still run deep in the state. But to present this reversal as some civilisational triumph and use it to launch a political comeback is parochial politics disguised as cultural activism.


Raj Thackeray, always the more theatrical of the two, warned the central government against trying to put its hands on Mumbai or Maharashtra while drawing the usual false equivalence between Hindi imposition and cultural erasure. Uddhav declared that Mumbai was their right in a self-congratulatory tone that conveniently forgets that the battles of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement were won just not by the Thackerays but by the blood, sweat and lives of countless trade unionists, reformers and socialists.


This redux of Thackeray unity appears less a revival of ideological purpose and more an act of mutual desperation. For Uddhav, whose grip on the Shiv Sena was weakened after Eknath Shinde’s defection, and for Raj, whose party has dwindled into political obscurity, this reunion is a chance to reoccupy the Marathi pride space that the BJP has encroached upon. But their vocabulary remains frozen in time, defined by Mumbai-centric chauvinism and linguistic nativism, with little to offer Vidarbha, Marathwada or the Konkan - regions where Marathi pride wears very different clothes.


It is telling that the rally was held in Mumbai and not elsewhere where agrarian distress, water scarcity or unemployment are far more pressing than whether Hindi is taught in school. The Marathi identity they speak of is narrowed to a postcode and pitted against a caricature of the Hindi-speaking other. But Maharashtra is not a monolith.


A politics built around Marathi linguistic identity cannot answer vital questions facing the state like improving health outcomes in rural districts or addressing rampant urban unemployment.


The BJP, with all its missteps, at least speaks of national ambition, digital expansion, global investment. The Thackerays, by contrast, offer retro-nativism in a shrinking frame. That may win a few wards in Mumbai’s civic body, but it will not resurrect a statewide legacy.


If the cousins believe their coming together is historic, they should note that the future of the Marathi voter does not lie in nostalgia but in a leadership that remembers. Mumbai is a city. Maharashtra is a state. And voters have a long memory.

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