64 | Rolling Stone | March 2020
Women
Shaping
The
FutureKYRA CONDIE ALWAYS climbed:
up trees, on top of the refrig-
erator, in the rafters of her
parents’ Twin Cities home. She
got hooked on the sport at a
birthday party in a gym when she was 11. At 13,
her career nearly ended before it began, when
she had to have 10 vertebrae fused with metal
rods to correct severe scoliosis. The surgery
marked a turning point. After, all Condie wanted
to do was climb — and be the best. “As soon as I
had the idea of climbing being taken away from
me,” she says, “all those times going to the gym
instead of the park with friends felt worth it.”
The dedication paid off. In 2019, Condie, 23,
and her friend of a decade, Brooke Raboutou,
18, qualified as the first American women to
compete in Olympic climbing when the sport
debuts at the Tokyo games this summer.
Raboutou started young too. She comes from
a family of climbers in Boulder, Colorado, where
her mom, a former champion, runs a gym. She’s
been climbing since before she can remember.
Condie noticed her for the first time at a national
competition in 2010: “This girl was a lot younger
than me, and just crushing everything.”
As the sport has increased in popularity,
teenage girls are emerging as its new stars. Their
superior weight-to-strength ratio may give them
an edge. In 2016, teens swept the women’s
national championships, and Raboutou herself
set several records before she turned 12. They’re
also gaining on men. Last fall, a nine-year-old
girl became the youngest person to scale Yosem-
ite’s 3,000-foot rock formation, El Capitan.
At the Olympics, climbers will compete in
three disciplines: lead climbing, where they
ascend as high as possible in six minutes; speed,
where two climbers race side by side; and
bouldering, where they try to complete the most
routes possible of the same wall in four minutes.
“It’s not just about being strong,” Raboutou says,
“but solving the problems in front of you.”
The preparation is grueling. In Colorado,
Raboutou practices for up to 11 hours a day,
fine-tuning runs, doing mobility exercises for
her shoulders, and to build strength, dangling
by three fingers from a ledge... and then doing
pull-ups. Condie, who trains in Salt Lake City,
powers through with a reggaeton playlist.
Inevitably, they face mansplainers. Condie
gets plenty of “tips” online (sample comment:
“You need to work on getting bigger biceps”),
but doesn’t let it get to her. Having Raboutou
helps. “In climbing, there’s an amazing commu-
nity of women who are all superstrong,”
she says. “Nobody takes the bullshit.”
SKATEBOARDING OUTSIDE
the Brooklyn townhouse she
shares with five roommates,
Alexis Sablone soars through a
shaft of January light with her
hoodie pulled over a beanie
and her five-foot-four frame
swimming in baggy jeans. A
seven-time X Games medalist,
her movement is effortless.
Yet Sablone, 33, is more
than just one of the world’s
best women’s street skaters.
She has a master’s degree in
architecture from MIT. She
designed a skateable public
sculpture in Sweden, and is
in talks for similar projects in
the U.S. In a studio, she builds
large-scale sculptures with
found materials; at home, she
designs decks as art director
for WKND Skateboards and
is working on a graphic novel
about nuclear waste.
These days, it’s skateboard-
ing that takes up most of her
time. Sablone is close to qual-
ifying for the Tokyo Olympics,
where the sport is making its
premiere in August. While
she’s currently ranked second
in U.S. women’s street skating,only 20 from the whole world
will compete in that category.
“It’s funny, because skate-
boarding always represented
freedom,” she says. “School
was structure. And right now
skateboarding is so structured.”
Growing up in Connecticut,
Sablone got her first skate-
board when she was 10. She
was drawn to the straightfor-
ward method, where repetition
got results. “You put in the
effort, you see things chang-
ing,” she says. “There’s always
something you’re working on.”
Trevor Thompson, a pro
skater and Sablone’s best
friend since childhood, says
her reserved demeanor and
gutsy style work in tandem.
“She’s small and not very loud,
so when you see her in action,
there’s something about the
contrast that strikes you.” As
kids, “she’d be skating better
than you, falling harder than
you. What are you gonna say?”
In grad school, Sablone
showed similar dedication.
“She was known for working
all hours of the day and night,”
says Skylar Tibbits, an asso-
ciate professor at MIT. It was
there that Sablone was inspired
to try sculpture. “A big part
of architecture school is using
different tools to make weird
stuff,” Sablone says. “But in
architecture, ideally we want
to be able to re-create it. [After
graduation] it was exciting that
I could still make stuff but nothave that limitation. I was like,
‘I can make anything!’ ”
For a long time, building a
career in skateboarding was
tough for women. “That’s why
I got into competitions in the
first place,” she says. “There
wasn’t really the other avenue
to make a living.”
But in the lead-up to the
Olympics, women have seen
increased visibility. In 2014,
Nike signed Leticia Bufoni;
in 2017, Adidas signed Nora
Vasconcellos. Last year,
Sablone landed a sponsorship
with Converse and designed
a shoe with her name on it.
Shortly after, Sablone, who
is gay, appeared in a 50th-
anniversary Pride campaign.
Having a platform as a queer
athlete is something she’s still
adjusting to. “Skateboarding is
something that’s always been
for everybody, not just one
type of person. That’s the spirit
of skateboarding,” she says.
“But in practice, it appeared
for years to be mostly straight
men, and that’s changing. To
be a queer woman, it puts you
in some kind of spotlight.”
As she enters the final
months of qualifiers, Sablone
is looking ahead to the other
side of this milestone — a
schedule with room for her
next project. “It’s gonna feel
really weird I think,” she says.
“But, then, probably exciting
to think about all that other
stuff again.” ANDREA MARKSBROOKE RABOUTOU & KYRA CONDIE
ALEXIS
SABLONE
She’s got a degree from MIT and designed a public sculpture in
Sweden. And she just might take skateboarding to the OlympicsPHOTOGRAPH BY Griffin Lotz