IT may be entirely coincidental, but Rebecca Kinghorn’s timing could not be better. The 17-year-old is one of Britain’s most promising young climbers and as she sits at home in Scotland watching the Rio Olympics, she knows that in four years’ time, it could be her pulling on a Team GB tracksuit.

Earlier this month, it was announced that climbing was one of the five new sports that had been accepted on to the Olympic programme and it will make its debut in Tokyo in 2020.

It was a monumental moment for climbing and Kinghorn is fully aware of just how important a step it could be both for the sport and for her personally.

“This is so great for climbing and it’s very exciting for me,” the teenager from Aberdeenshire said. “I think a lot of young climbers were really excited to hear that climbing’s been accepted into the Tokyo Olympics and we’ll all be training really hard for it because it’d be brilliant to compete for GB in the Olympics.

“That’s definitely an aim of mine and I think that Tokyo in four years is a realistic target. I’ve always watched the Olympics and so it would be amazing to compete in it myself.”

The benefits to a sport of being included in the Olympic Games are almost incalculable and particularly for sports such as climbing which struggle to attract media attention or sponsorship money. The Tokyo Games will showcase climbing on the most prestigious of all platforms and Kinghorn is hopeful that having Olympic status will help to grow the sport that she has spent over half of her life involved in.

Aged eight, Kinghorn’s father took her along to a climbing wall in Aberdeen but she didn’t have an immediate affinity with the sport.

“When I started, I could never get to the top of the wall because I was always too scared to go that high,” she says. “But as time went on, I got better and then after about six months of climbing, one of the coaches suggested I started competing.”

Sports climbing takes place on a man-made climbing wall and consists of three disciplines; lead climbing, a speed test and bouldering. Kinghorn specialises in lead climbing and competitors are judged not on their speed up the wall but rather how far up the wall they get.

Physically, climbing is extremely challenging with good upper-body strength particularly important – Kinghorn can manage sets of 30 pull-ups which is no mean feat. At only 5’1” though, the teenager is smaller than the majority of her rivals and her diminutive stature brings its own challenges.

“Being taller is an advantage in this sport because when you’re small, you need to be more dynamic and jump for a lot of moves whereas being tall, you can just reach across,” she explains.

“In training, I do a lot of dynamic movements up the wall to improve my power endurance and I do a lot of circuits. It can be really tough because in lead climbing, you have to drag the rope up into the clip and when you’re fatigued, that’s so hard to do. That’s where the training comes in – all of that helps you to push a few more moves out even when you’re exhausted.

“In big competitions, three more moves can make as big a difference as 10 or 15 places so your fitness can have a big impact.”

It is not Kinghorn’s physical condition that has the greatest influence on her performance though. It is, she admits, her mental state that impacts how well she performs, particularly when she is under pressure.

“For me, the toughest thing is to control my anxiety,” she says. “I get really nervous and so I have to try and control that. Over the last few years, I’ve got better at controlling my nerves and I think I’ve overcome that fear. It gives me confidence that I’m coping better and it makes me believe that if I focus on the positives, I can make finals in the major events.”

In just two weeks’ time, Kinghorn will compete in the European Youth Championships in Austria and having been in good form this year, she is optimistic about putting in a good performance.

“I’m definitely aiming to get to the semi-finals and then hopefully make the final,” she says. “Only eight climbers make the final, though, so that will be tough. But I’ve had a good year so far. I’m feeling great and I’m excited to see how I can do.”