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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

Parrot Politics

In the charade of global politics, it is one thing for American President Donald Trump, the master of bombast, to blurt out trumped facts about Operation Sindoor to puff himself up before a Republican dinner crowd. But it is infinitely more dangerous for Rahul Gandhi, India’s Leader of the Opposition, to lend credence to Trump’s fiction in full public view.


That Trump claimed, for the 24th time, that he prevented a nuclear war between India and Pakistan by threatening trade sanctions is unsurprising. His inflated sense of self-worth is rivalled only by his detachment from fact. The former president’s latest flourish that “four or five jets” were “shot out of the air” is vintage Trump: unprovable and unverified. In the hands of any responsible political actor, such nonsense would be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. But Gandhi saw fit to amplify it by seeking clarification about Trump’s claims from Prime Minister Modi.


In doing so, he did not just attack Narendra Modi but cast doubt on the integrity of India’s armed forces, the credibility of India’s diplomacy and the dignity of its democratic discourse.


The irony is that both men - Trump and Gandhi - are political heirs who treat institutions with disdain and facts as inconveniences. Trump, who once called Pakistan “a safe haven for terrorists” now accommodates Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir, the brain behind the brutal Pahalgam attack wherein 26 Indian civilians were massacred by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists.


It is a grotesque revisionism that betrays Washington’s long-standing frustration with Pakistan’s double game on terror. In parroting Trump, Gandhi mimics that same selective amnesia.


India’s defence forces deserve more than to have their professionalism questioned on the basis of one man’s pathological lying and another’s political opportunism. In claiming to ask for clarity by parroting conspiracy and in questioning the government’s policy by validating a foreign demagogue, Rahul Gandhi only sows more mistrust.


In repeatedly aligning himself with dubious international narratives, be it comments made abroad about the state of Indian democracy or Trump’s invented ceasefire, Gandhi reinforces the ruling party’s most potent accusation that the Congress has grown more comfortable criticising India than defending it.


Gandhi’s eagerness to amplify Trump’s ramblings rather than stand with his own country’s institutions is not just politically reckless but morally indefensible. That a leader who aspires to govern India would so casually cast doubt on its military and peddle fiction sourced from a compulsive fabulist is an insult to the office he seeks and to the men and women in uniform he so glibly undermines.


India deserves a better opposition that can hold the government accountable without endorsing the unhinged fantasies of a twice-impeached American populist. An opposition that can tell the difference between a diplomatic lie and a national security threat. Rahul Gandhi, in his eagerness to needle Modi, appears to have lost that distinction. In doing so, he has done grave disservice to the nation he claims to speak for.

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