Climbing, Gianluca Vighetti Italian Under 16 champion

The house in Susa, the school in Oulx, the gym where he trains almost every day in Collegno. Gianluca Vighetti’s days are full, divided between the upper valley and the Turin belt, where he has been climbing walls and rankings for a few years. Born in 2008, following in his father’s footsteps – his father Valter was among the pioneers of this discipline, one of the best at national level – Gianluca graduated in May under 16 Italian champion in the lead specialty, the one in which another Turinese, Stefano Ghisolfi , excels at home and abroad for years.

«I started at Escape in Collegno, I was a beginner child and the gym had just opened. It can be said that we grew up together », he says, now that his first Italian title is on the bulletin board and Escape is among the best gyms in Piedmont.

Vighetti prevailed in San Martino di Castrozza where the most promising climbing talents met, a success that consecrated him on the Italian scene but the season isn’t over yet and there is still a dream to realize: « I’m aiming for the call-up for the Junior World Cup in Korea in August. That would be the icing on the cake.”

He was still in elementary school when his father started taking him to the crag, to pass on his twenty-year passion to him: «The first time was in Mont-Dauphin near Briançon», recalls Gianluca. In Gravere, a stone’s throw from his home, he completed his first 9a (according to a European scale of difficulty ranging from 1 to 9), while last summer he was in Norway, climbing with the multiple Italian champion Ghisolfi, who there he conquered Move Hard (9b) and “attacked” Silence (9c), the hardest route in the world. A lightning-fast career that of Vighetti, made up of passion and work, sometimes even very hard. «I wake up early in the morning to go to school, this year I attended the first year of sports high school and it went well (passed with an average of 8 ed)», then «I go home, have lunch and leave by train for With wood. I train four times a week, the only day off is Thursday. It happens to study in various movements, but I’m not complaining. Bearable sacrifices? «It’s tiring, especially in winter, but it’s what I love to do and victories are a nice injection of energy».