Mejdi Schalck during the Climbing World Cup in Innsbruck, Austria, June 18, 2023. ERICH SPIESS / AFP
At 19, Mejdi Schalck embodies the present and the future of French climbing. But, for his first World Championships (until August 12), which he approaches as a favourite, in Bern, the climber, winner of two World Cup stages this season, in Hachioji (Japan) and Seoul, was overtaken by his age. “I was really stressed, he says. There are many stakes, between a title of world champion and qualifying places for the Paris Games. »
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When he entered the race on Tuesday August 1, Mejdi Schalck qualified for the semi-finals of the bouldering event, one of the three sports climbing disciplines with speed and difficulty, which consists of go as high as possible on a route that can go up to 20 meters. “Blocking, where the surface to climb does not exceed 5 meters, is more fun. It’s more freestyle, it fits my personality better.”explains the French champion of this discipline in 2023.
Yet Schalck had won a silver medal in difficulty at the Junior World Championships in Voronezh, Russia, in 2021. Explosive and versatile, the 1.72m climber relies on pure innate strength and his qualities of flexibility. For “keep a good level in difficulty, a discipline that requires enormous resistance in the fingers and forearms”the Frenchman inflicts a large volume of training on himself, between physical preparation and specific climbing sessions (24 hours a week), and demonstrates great dietary rigor for “avoid gaining unnecessary weight in the lower body”.
The 2024 Games in sight
Sacrifices that the native of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) imposed on himself from the age of 13, when his mother, a doctor of Algerian origin, decided to move to Chambéry so that Mejdi, eldest of siblings of three, can benefit from supervised training “in the best club in France”. His progress is dazzling. Two years after his arrival, he joined the French team and finished 2ᵉ in a European Cup stage for young people with difficulty.
Mejdi Schalck during the 2022 European Championships, in Munich, Germany, on August 18, 2022. INA FASSBENDER / AFP
However, nothing predestined Mejdi Schalck to such a course. “My mother saw me climbing trees everywhere, he remembers, amused. When I was 8, she enrolled me in the climbing club in my town, in Arkose Montreuil. And I liked it right away. » The Jean-Moulin-Les Guilands de Montreuil park, where he clung to his first holds, is not so far from the Le Bourget climbing site, where the events of the Paris Olympic Games will take place: “It’s less than 10 kilometers from my house! »
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For the second appearance of climbing at the Olympics (after Tokyo in 2021), the speed test has been separated from the combined, which will combine bouldering and difficulty. “I’m good at both disciplines. This new format gives me more chances to be Olympic champion, my dream. » Alongside Oriane Bertone (18), winner of her first bouldering World Cup stage in Prague on June 2, Mejdi Schalck symbolizes the promising new generation of French climbing. “There is a real enthusiasm for climbing in France”underlines the young man. The number of licensees within the French Mountain and Climbing Federation – more than 115,000 in July 2023 – is constantly increasing.
But, to reach Olympus, Mejdi Schalck will first have to win his qualification for the Paris Games. In Switzerland during the Worlds, ten places will be allocated to the highest ranked climbers (the first three in the combined as well as the champion and vice-champion in speed, for women and men). In the semi-finals on Friday (at 10 a.m.), they will be twenty to compete for six places for the final (at 6:30 p.m.). “It’s not going to be easy, between the new headliners, the Japanese armada and the Czech legend Adam Ondra, four times world champion », he explains. But Mejdi Schalck continues to cling to his “kid’s dream”.
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