Climbing Up to You - Minsung

Chapter 6

It was no surprise that on the day of the Climbing World Cup, Jisung was a mess. Despite it being in his home country and the need for catching a plane and staying in uncomfortable beds in hotels, Jisung was beyond nervous. Today was the day where he'd find out if he makes it to the Olympics.

After the very short training camp, Jisung decided the few weeks leading up to the contests he would focus solely on speed. Chris was elated at Han coming into the training centre a couple of days later and claiming he wanted to improve his speed times. Even though it took a lot of time and endless hours of re-doing and memorizing his whole new route and getting the speed time, Jisung was happy with his improvement, he now just had to perform well at the World Cup so that he got a good enough time to qualify. Changing his route a few weeks before such a big competition was either very stupid or genius for Han. Usually changing speed routes would take months to perfect so that your muscle memory would also take it all in. But for Jisung he didn't have the luxury. He would have to try and perform with it.

"You good Ji?" Chris came over to Jisung who had started his warm-up just before they announced the start of the contest.

"I'm good, just nervous, but that's normal. I really need to do well all together on the rounds so that I can qualify" Jisung took in a deep breath trying to not stress. He even had the plus of being on homeland and so more of the public watching will be rooting for him... okay maybe that wasn't such a good thing, way too much pressure to please all of the public who had come to watch him.

"Ji, you can relax, your bouldering scores are definitely already good enough, just focus on one thing at a time, right? That's what Momo said, didn't she? Focus on one thing at a time so you don't have time to stress over what else you need to do until it's time to move on." Chris made sure to make eye contact with the younger.

He knew that if Jisung avoided eye contact he wasn't actually listening.

"Ok, yes, you're right" Jisung rolled out his shoulders and made his way over to his bag so he could slip on his shoes and get ready to line up with the others participating in the World Cup. He would be the first to be announced considering it was his country they were competing in. Of course, it was the usual group of climbers. Jeongin had made it, as well as Seungmin and Hyunjin, Felix was standing next to him buzzing for the contest to start.

Right at the very back were Minho and Changbin.

The walk out was just like any other, except this time the crowd cheering for Jisung was louder than anyone's, as he walked under the spotlight he could see a large array of GB flags as well as some of his teammates sitting in the pits with his coach and the other countries teammates or coaches.

He felt himself smile slightly at the thought of so many people cheering him on.

Felix was quick to follow shortly behind him, the freckled boy getting an array of cheers from his teammates and a few aussie fans in the crowd.

"..and the crowd are already a buzz! With Han Jisung leading out the competitors ready to start the speed contest. Now Jamie, I heard this is a really important contest today, some of these hopeful climbers will be able to find out if they get to make it to the Olympics! We still have a year until the games but this day could be the most important climb for some of these Climbers today." Jisung heard Jackson talking over the speaker commentating the contest as the group were ushered back into the waiting room to prepare to the speed round which would start almost immediately.

"That's right Jackson, in fact most of the climbers today are aiming for the Olympics, and most of them are in the running! After todays contest some will be told if they qualify. And right now our speed contest is starting! The two climbers first out are Felix Lee from Australia and Yang Jeongin from Japan. Both are pretty friendly with each other but it's clear they both have their game faces on. Lee will be aiming for a record and Yang will be hoping to keep his position on the qualifying leaderboard." Jamie commentated as Jisung watched on the screen in the back so see how the climbs go.