An Olympic climbing athlete's devastating slip-up has gone viral after it caused her to miss out on a Tokyo 2020 win.
Iuliia Kaplina of the Russian Olympic Committee was up against Team GB's Shauna Coxsey when she got off to a flying start in the first heat of the three-discipline women's sport climbing, the Daily Mail reports.
However, as she competed at the Aomi Urban Sports Park, she slipped up moments before she reached the top of the wall - a mistake that caused her to slip, fall, and enable her competitor to take the lead.
Watch the viral slip-up below:Kaplina began to cry as she descended from the bolder, but the record-holding climber still managed to place fifth with her first attempt time of 7.65 seconds, per Olympics.com.
Coxsey later said of the incident, as per the Guardian: "The format is not ideal. As an athlete, I think it's pretty risky on your body. It's intense. It's almost impossible to train all the aspects of the combined in a good way, anyway."
After the video was reposted to Reddit, supportive viewers took to the comments section to sympathise with the athlete.
One wrote: "Luckily her first attempt was 7.65 seconds, she just tried to improve her already great earlier run. I can imagine she is very disappointed, but fortunately not the end of the world."
A second added: "the leg kicks as she descended is what got me... poor thing."
A third wrote: "I saw this on TV in the UK, and the commentator referred to it as a 'tantrum'. I thought that was cruel when she's just showing emotion."
A fourth remarked: "Oh god I can't imagine how she feels. You train for several years in your life just for a 10 second event but all the effort goes to waste due to a small mistake."
However, she was not the only athlete to fall off the wall at Tokyo 2020, and it also happened to Coxsey, the Guardian reports, who ended up placing 10th after ranking 15th in Speed, 4th in Boulder and 13th in Lead.
