A role model to South Asian women in sports and anyone facing a self-limiting belief or barrier, a Guinness World record-breaking climber, is sharing her inspirational journey to help others unlock their potential.
Born in Luxemburg, to Pakistani parents, 34-year-old Anoushé Husain, who now resides in London, was born with one less limb, missing her right arm below the elbow.
In 2017, Husain was awarded the Asian Women of Achievement Award for Sport and was the recipient of the Helen Rollason Award, for Inspiration at The Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year.
She now sets the record for the greatest vertical distance climbed on a climbing wall with one hand in one hour, after climbing 374.85 m (1,229 ft 9 in), at The Castle Climbing Centre in London.
Living with multiple health conditions and surviving cancer, Anoushé talks to Asian Sunday about the implications she ensued in 2020, when she began her journey to partake in setting a Guinness World record, and how she stopped at nothing to climb to the top to reach her goal.
“It was pretty brutal, I started training for it in early 2020, I then caught covid,” she goes on to explain that she had then suffered from long covid symptoms, for six months, with blood clotting, lower lung capacity loss of her ability to walk and dislocated her knee.
“Even when I got back to the climbing wall when things were open again, I couldn’t climb anymore, my coach was literally hoisting me up the climbing wall,” says the competitive climbing athlete.
After undergoing abdominal surgery in January 2020, which took time to heal, she went to rehab in order to learn how to climb again.
“Being nearly at the peak of doing a Guinness record, to then be unable to walk and needing hoisting up a wall, was a dramatic change”.
Giving context to the matter she says, “In order to do a record like this you have to be so meticulous in your preparation, ahead of the time, so that when you’re there you’re the best you can be, especially with the health conditions that I have, it’s about landing it at the right time so that I’m not having a flare-up”.
Training since august last year, the para climber says “It’s one thing to train as a competitive climber, which I already do, and it’s another thing to climb socially, but Guinness training requires a specific type of climbing.
“To do that I had to reach certain fitness targets before even attempting to do Guinness again, having lost so much having been ill and between the surgery”.
The 34-year-old international athlete told Asian Sunday her family feared for her safety, but then came round, as they watched her compete and realised how much it was giving her.
She would get the cultural stereotype comments that were unwarranted but still exist like “your shoulders are going to get big; guys are not going to marry you because I’m going to look too muscley”.
However, she adds this was a cultural stigma attached to what she does, as she now competes with her husband whom she met at climbing competitions and is “An English man who married me and converted to Islam”.
Anoushé candidly talks about there being a lot of cultural stigmas around South Asian women being physically active and not fitting into societal norms.
“We should be encouraging them to take part in physical activities, because there are a lot of barriers in place still that shouldn’t be there in the first place, so who are we challenging, who constructed these societal norms women are so afraid of going against?
“And if it’s about modesty, which often it is, you can still be active and modest, also find a female coach or take a friend with you.
“Yeah, I’ve got muscley shoulders and I’m bloody proud of them, but I also wear desi clothes, I wear feminine clothes when I want to, I’m still just as much a woman, as I am an athlete”.
Anoushé continues to challenge the nonprogressive views of society in order to change the misconceptions about South Asian women competing in sports. Through her work, she aims to help those stigmatised to empower them to reach their potential, despite what society may tell them.
Asian Sunday says more power to Anoushé!