Hendrawati climbs her way to the top

Hendrawati climbs her way to the top

Chris Brummitt, Associated Press, Jakarta

Cultural conventions haven't been obstacles as Etti Hendrawati has climbed the ranks of her chosen sport. She's also made light work of the crags, choss, chimneys or corners that would daunt non-climbers.

Clinging to an overhang by her fingertips, the Indonesian champion prepares to pull out over a roof as a row of spectators 10 meters below crane their necks and collectively hold their breath.

Working into a tiny handhold, or crimp, she composes herself, then hooks her heel around for extra leverage and hauls herself to the top of the climbing wall to claim the latest in a long line of victories.

Hendrawati, 27, is Indonesia's best female competition climber. Almost unbeatable at home, she has also won against the world's best in competitions as far away as the United States, Iran and China.

While she's working every muscle to its limits on ascent, Hendrawati hardly shows it.

The tight fitting shorts and skimpy tops favored by most of her female rivals are not in her wardrobe. As a practicing Muslim, she wears an Islamic headscarf and modest clothes when on the wall.

And she is keen to challenge perceptions that her faith and her sport are somehow incompatible.

"I'm proud that by climbing I can show there are no obstacles or prohibitions in Islam," she said before a recent national competition in Jakarta.

"I can hopefully change the image that Islam prevents women from doing what men do."

Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country in the world. But its government is secular, and most people here balk at radical Islam common in some parts of the Muslim world.

Hendrawati says she has yet to experience any resistance from Muslim clerics or religious groups in her native town of Yogyakarta, a tourist city on Indonesia's main island of Java.

"In fact the clerics say the opposite," she said. "They encourage me to keep climbing."

Competition climbing, while most popular in Europe and the United States, is rapidly becoming a favorite sport in Asia. Its organizing body, the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation, is lobbying for Olympic status.

Competitors climb a wall on plastic foot and hand holds, all the while clipping their rope into fixed anchors, which would stop their fall in case of a slip. The climber who reaches the highest point wins.

Speed climbing, where the fastest competitor up the wall wins, is another branch of the sport, and is becoming the favored discipline due to its attractiveness for television.

Indonesia has embraced the sport, with events held almost every week in towns across the archipelago. Ranking events are held every three months, and competition to join the national team is intense.

Along with badminton, where Indonesia is a world leader, climbing gives the nation rare international sporting success. Hendrawati began climbing when she was 17 on the steep limestone outcrops that line the beaches and stud the mountains of Java island.

After a year of scaling some of the hardest routes in the country, she realized she had to make the switch to competition climbing to make money from her hobby.

She is now the reigning Asian speed champion, and a one-time winner and regular competitor in the annual X-Games, a popular adventure sport competition in the United States.

"She is small, but so strong and professional," said Paulus Lodewijk, the head of the Indonesian Rock Climbing Federation's competition section.

Hendrawati wants to keep climbing for as long as she can. She is still eying a shot at climbing's World Championship, scheduled for France later this year.

But with no state funding, scraping together the airfare for a trip to Europe will be difficult, she says. In the meantime, she plans to keep up her training schedule.

"God willing something will turn up," she says.