ATLANTA — Emma Hunt, a U.S. Olympic speed climber from Georgia, sent a signal she's ready for Paris with a gold medal performance at a World Cup event in Utah.
The most recent IFSC Climbing World Cup series competition was held last weekend in Salt Lake City with Woodstock native Hunt winning on a time of 6.55 seconds.
"To simply say 'I had fun competing' would be an understatement," she said in part on Instagram.
It was her first medal of the 2024 World Cup series, with one previous World Cup stop in China last month featuring speed climbing. She also won silver at last year's world championships, which sent her on her way to Paris.
The category is under rock climbing, but speed climbing itself only made it to the Olympics in the 2020 Summer Games.
More about Emma
Emma Hunt is a 20-year-old speed climber from Woodstock. She is the first American woman to qualify for the Olympic sport of speed climbing, which will debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Hunt qualified for the 2024 Olympics after earning a silver medal at the 2023 IFSC World Championships in Switzerland with a time of 6.67 seconds.
After qualifying for Team USA with her world silver, she also took a silver at the 2023 Pan American Games, losing the final with a false start.
She is currently a student at Kennesaw State University, where she studies exercise science and trains at the nearby Stone Summit Climbing facility. Hunt has been speed climbing since 2015 and was the 2019 youth world champion in the event.
In 2022, she broke the U.S. record in speed climbing with a time of 6.83 seconds.
Watch the full interview below: