After Giving Up His 2020 Olympic Dreams for Family, Campbell Harrison Is Going to Paris
This story appeared in our 2024 print edition of Ascent. You can buy a copy of the magazine here.
Eleven-year-old Campbell Harrison free soloed ancient tombs. It wasn’t the most engaging activity, and he was a little bored, hanging with one arm off a statue of an ancient Egyptian god. The desert around him was a mess of beige. At this height, 50 feet off the sandy ground, everything blurred into indistinguishable shapes. Harrison would prefer monkeying around the climbing gym, even if it was on toprope. But free soloing tombs was better than homework. If only there were more pixels, he could see the pyramids better.
Yvette Harrison quietly pushed open the door and found her young son absentmindedly punching buttons on the controller, making Lara Croft scale temple walls. All the video game’s intended raiding was forgotten. Strange, thought Yvette, but safer than climbing up the house’s rain gutter. She called him to dinner, where Campbell mimed climbing movements between mouthfuls and crimped the edge of the table. When the food was eaten and the dishes cleaned, Harrison returned to his bedroom the hard way: by stemming his way down the hall.
“Something clicks” when he climbs, Campbell, now 27, told me. The movement unlocks a flood of serotonin that can only be described as childish glee.
Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, the kid who made everything—even video games—about climbing would become an Olympian.
I met Campbell through a computer screen. After some back and forth with his agent and negotiating the time differences between Melbourne and Denver, Campbell answered my video call from his apartment.
He wore a baggy gray T-shirt and rectangular glasses. His wide smile radiated a deep-seated optimism. The side and back of his head were closely buzzed, leaving a messy mop of dyed-blond hair, the kind where you can’t be sure whether he rolled out of bed with it or spent hours styling it. Every now and then, Campbell would straighten his already straight glasses before he spoke in a rich Australian drawl. His boyfriend, Justin Maire, could be seen tapping at a computer in the tidy workspace behind him.
The phone call, he told me, came in December 2020. At the time, Campbell was one of Australia’s best climbers; since those years of pixelated free soloing, his love for climbing had only deepened, and he’d traveled the world to participate in the international circuit. Just weeks later, he was scheduled to travel to Sydney for the IFSC Oceania Continental Championships, where he had a good shot at qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Games. Campbell had sat with his phone pressed tightly against his ear, and he could hear the tears choking his mother’s voice as she told him that his older sister, Emily, had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Despite her prognosis, Emily was optimistic and accepted none of Campbell’s doom-and-gloom attitude. She sternly told him to continue toward his 2020 Olympic dreams. Dutifully, when the time came, he left for his trip.
But the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus was taking hold. Mid-event, the virus broke out in Sydney, and Australia began shutting both international and state borders. The competition would go on, but if Campbell didn’t untie and leave quickly, he would be stuck in Sydney, 450 miles and a state border away from his family, away from his sister.
Campbell called his father, Russell. “I’m going to be selfish and say, I want you home,” Russell said. But Emily stood her ground; she did not want Campbell to put his life and dreams on hold for her diagnosis.
Campbell grappled with his options. In a sport where world champions are usually young guns, he didn’t like his chances of waiting until the next Olympics. In four years, a younger, stronger crowd would be ready to fight for the Olympic ticket. This, Campbell believed, was his only chance. But he’d spent much of his late teens and early 20s away from his family, traveling the globe for World Cups.
Campbell drove home to Melbourne. He gave up his Olympic dream.
He didn’t talk about it for months. “That’s the most concerned I’ve ever been about Campbell’s welfare,” said Yvette.
“I reckon with that decision a lot,” said Campbell. “But family is the most important thing.”
Slowly, amid pandemic uncertainty, concern for his sister, and a sea of self-doubt, he shifted his sights to Paris 2024.
Campbell arrived in the world on June 28, 1997, screaming inconsolably. Unlike his three other siblings, who were all “peaches and cream,” said Yvette, baby Campbell was “squishy and cuddly, yes—but he had a lot to say from the word ‘go.’”
Campbell started climbing at age 8 when Russell took the children to the Victorian Climbing Centre and noticed Campbell’s immediate vigor. It’s the age-old climber tale: Campbell almost immediately lost interest in the other sports he dabbled in, including swimming, soccer, and track and field. All he wanted to do was climb. Yvette was happy for an outlet if it stopped Campbell from climbing unsupervised all over the house.
As the years went by, Campbell’s siblings each steered toward other interests, but Campbell continued to return to the dingy climbing gym day after day. Russell was happy to accompany his eldest son. After a severe motorcycle crash in 2004, which left him with a spinal fracture and incomplete paraplegia, it was the only sport he was physically capable of supporting.
The injury was life-altering for the whole family. Campbell was 6 at the time, and he remembers his mother crying on the phone and trying to explain to her young children what an “accident” meant. He remembers the bright, sterile hospital room and the steady beep-beep-beep of medical equipment. Then it was the rehabilitation centers, where Campbell and his siblings ran amok while Russell worked to regain mobility. Twelve months later, Russell returned home in a wheelchair. It was years before he found his way back on his feet. To this day, Russell walks with a brace, cane, and noticeable limp.
The accident shaped Campbell’s perception of what it meant to take risks. Free soloing pixelated tombs was fine, as was the occasional lap up the family gutters, but he’s never considered going ropeless on rock. Watching people take out-of-control falls off boulders has always made Campbell feel a visceral terror, no matter how many times he’s witnessed it.
“My dad was capable and fit,” said Campbell. “Watching him go from super-dad to not being able to walk without aid changed me. It changed all of us.” When his friends jumped off piers into the ocean, Campbell climbed down and waded in. He wore a helmet while climbing and biking.
“He’s always been scared of heights,” Yvette told me. “So he wouldn’t climb high without a rope and harness.”
Campbell’s parents answered my call from their kitchen in Melbourne, Australia. Behind them was a fridge, every inch covered in notes and family photos. From the mess, Yvette picked one photo to show me. Peering over the photo, they sat close to each other. Russell wore glasses, his hair the same color as Campbell’s buzzed sides.
When Campbell was 13, the family visited the Gloucester Tree in Gloucester National Park, a 200-foot-tall karri that tourists often ascend via metal ladder rungs. Yvette climbed the tree and yelled for her son, already an expert climber, to follow. Campbell began to ascend, but he stopped 15 feet off the ground, about the height of a bouldering wall, and instinctively reached behind his back to chalk up. Yvette chuckled at the memory with a mixture of pride and amusement. When he found no chalk bag at his back, Campbell’s surroundings came into sharp focus, and he felt naked without a harness. “‘Too sketchy,’ he said and climbed down,” Yvette recalled, laughing.
Campbell’s cautious approach to risk and heights didn’t stop him in the gym. Unmaintained metal ladder rungs hammered into a tree were not to be trusted, but a rope and a harness with his dad belaying were.
Russell’s motorcycle accident also shaped Campbell’s worldview on inclusivity.
“From a very young age, our four children learned what inclusivity meant,” Russel said. “They were quick to see—hey, Dad can’t get in there.”
Recognizing how the world was not designed for disabled people was a turning point for Campbell. Who else was the world not designed for? He had a vague sense of the answer by age 7. By 11, when Campbell’s male classmates were beginning to talk about girls, he admitted to himself that he was same-sex attracted and wondered if this would be a secret he would have to take to the grave. There were no queer role models in his life, and he did not know any gay climbers.
Russell and Yvette had their assumptions, but if Campbell wasn’t ready to talk about it, they weren’t going to push the subject. Instead, Russell showed his unwavering support for Campbell in the gym, often belaying him for multi-hour sessions. When the climbing center closed down, Russell took the 9-year-old Campbell to another gym where a local competition was taking place. By then, Campbell had developed a meticulous climbing style. Where his competitors liked to showboat and cut feet, Campbell stayed glued to the wall. He won the youth category by a wide margin, topping many adult routes, too, and he discovered a zest for competitions.
At the same gym a few years later, Campbell battled for the Australian Youth National title against another boy. Both boys topped the finals and super-finals routes on toprope. The organizers and routesetters frantically cobbled together a tiebreaker. When the 13-year-old Campbell was asked, “Do you know how to lead climb?” he replied, in a shaky voice, “I guess?”
Campbell missed out on the national title that year by two holds, but it was not from a lack of trying. Despite only having clipped draws on the ground during a lead climbing class, Campbell jumped on the lead route determined to win. Russell belayed, so at least he had that solace. “That would never happen in today’s competitions,” said Campbell with a laugh. “The rules have changed many times since.”
Back in 2012, during Campbell’s earliest competition days, Australia’s competitive sport climbing scene lagged far behind Europe, Asia, and North America. Overseen by Sport Climbing Australia (SCA), the competitions within which Campbell came of age looked very little like they do now. Climbers attended a tryout where they were presented with five routes; depending on the competitor’s age, you had to flash a certain number of the routes to qualify for the World Youth Championships. As the competitive climbing scene in Australia grew, the qualification process changed to accommodate the growing demand. Now, the SCA structures its National Championships as closely as possible to World Cups and World Championships, but the amount of international support they can offer remains limited. Only in 2023 did the SCA hire a full-time employee, and the 2024 season will be the first in which the SCA can focus resources on climbers attending the Olympic Qualifier Series and the Paris Games.
Challenges remain, however, for Australia’s comp climbers. Team athletes, Campbell says, have little opportunity to work together due to Australia’s size—Melbourne and Sydney are 10 hours apart by car. The athletes are largely left to their own devices in terms of training, coaching, and day-to-day financial support. Campbell has grown accustomed to traveling alone overseas.
To support her son during his early years on the international circuit, Yvette took matters into her own hands. She baked cookies and cupcakes and sliced oranges. “I went everywhere with a tray of food and sold it,” Yvette told me. “I’m a house cleaner, and it’s not a very joyful job, but at the end of the year, I would go to the bank and throw in all the coins. There you go—a ticket to Canada, Singapore, Italy, wherever you need to go.”
Sometimes, Yvette said pensively, when she bought those plane tickets, she would translate dollars to cupcakes sold and toilets cleaned.
Campbell’s journey on the international circuit began poorly. During his first World Cup in Munich, Germany, in 2015, he sat in isolation with his headphones in. He felt jittery, well aware of Australia’s meager standing on the global stage of competitive climbing. No one expected him to win or even make the semifinals. When he stepped out onto the mats during the qualification round, the glare of the lights jarred him, and the adrenaline continued to build. Campbell topped the first two boulders quickly, but he felt uneasy. Next to him were pro climbers he had watched online for years. “They are competitors now, not idols,” Campbell reminded himself.
The third boulder was crimpy. Campbell gained the zone, but midway through a lockoff, his foot flagged past the black tape marking the boundaries of the climb. The judge called him off, and as he took his feet off the wall to jump down, he felt a pop and an instant tingling sensation. Back in iso, the on-site physiotherapist gingerly massaged his finger and told him that he had ruptured the A2 in his left middle finger. Campbell remembers the words: “There is no pulley there anymore. You’ve destroyed it.”
Campbell couldn’t think of a worse time to suffer a finger injury. The Munich World Cup was supposed to be a warm-up for a season of firsts, including his first Lead World Cup and World Youth Championships. But those would have to wait. The European World Cup tour turned into a European holiday, which turned into a downward spiral. Campbell felt robbed. He drank more than he normally would, and he pitied himself. In hindsight, says Campbell, there were other issues causing his inability to see beyond his competitive performance. Undiagnosed depression and anxiety were his prime suspects, plus a malnourished body.
The return to Australia was not a joyous one. Yvette recalls a darkness that hung over her son. “Was he always so thin?” she asked Russell that night.
Over the following year, Campbell ping-ponged between overeating and undereating. The weight gain left stretch marks on his biceps, while the rapid weight loss left him feeling lightheaded and fatigued.
One evening, the Campbells went out to their favorite local restaurant to celebrate Emily’s birthday. “They have magnificent desserts,” says Yvette. She ordered lemon meringue pie, a family favorite, and a sampler plate filled with all the classics, and she cut out generous slices for each of her children. It was a bright Sunday, there was a comedian on stage, and Campbell was bubblier than he had been in a while. But then the comedian cracked a joke: “Looks like table six is trying to put themselves into a sugar coma!”
Yvette watched Campbell’s face stiffen and fall. Quietly, he pushed his cake away and did not eat another bite.
The dark cloud of eating disorders has plagued the competitive climbing community since the 1980s. “They trained heavy and competed light,” said Russell. Neither parent knew the extent and danger of eating disorders in climbing, but they sensed something was off. Campbell started by cutting out junk food and progressed into weighing everything he ate. Russell believed all of Campbell’s teammates were weight conscious, and he assumed it was just a part of being a climbing athlete. After all, they were top athletes—they had to be fit and healthy, right? Russell and Yvette made sure the house was always stocked with healthy, whole-food snacks, but neither monitored what their children ate throughout the day. They were unaware Campbell was lying to them, claiming he had eaten dinner at practice when he had nothing more than an apple or a can of tuna. In a sport where you are at constant war with gravity, it was all too easy to revert to the idea that light means strong.
Campbell is now starkly aware of the dangers of disordered eating. Having Justin in his life, he told me, changed his relationship with food. “Justin is healthy, and he eats intuitively,” says Campbell. The relationship gave him the example he needed to see and a trusted partner to hold him accountable should bad habits return.
Although Campbell had to grapple with his eating disorder, depression, and anxiety in the years that followed the Munich World Cup, his sexuality was not something he ever wanted to hide. He never came out in the traditional sense, but he subtly made sure his parents and siblings knew. One day, Campbell told his parents he was headed to Climbing Cuties, an affinity group for queer climbers. They told him to have fun. Another day, Campbell said he’d been invited to speak on a panel for queer climbers. They asked if they could attend.
Justin still remembers the day he met Campbell. It was an evening gathering for queer climbers at the local gym. “In the age where most people meet online, we had the classic story of catching each other’s eye from across the room,” Campbell joked. Justin, a comp-climbing fan, recognized Campbell from social media. Campbell’s public persona is indistinguishable from who he really is, Justin told me. Campbell does not fake it.
People often chide Campbell on social media about how his accounts have “gotten too political.” By political, they mean a candid photo of Campbell and Justin enjoying a date at the beach. He made a face as he recounted this and held a hand up in confusion. “How is that political?” he asked. Campbell noted that most of the hateful comments he receives online come from Americans.
“Why should I change the way I feel just because of someone else’s perception of me?” he said. During his teenage years, Campbell promised himself that he would never hide his sexuality, online or off. He never made a fuss about it, nor would he let it be the only thing that defines who he is, but there would be no hiding. He was determined to be the role model he needed at 11.
Between 2020 and 2023, Campbell continued to dial in his World Cup performances. In July 2023, he placed 26th in the Briançon Lead World Cup. In September, he matched the performance in Koper, Slovenia.
Campbell had extra time to care for himself as the Olympic trials drew closer. It wasn’t just the physical training that mattered; the mental one was equally important. Heading into the Oceania Qualifier, Campbell knew what a good headspace felt like, and frequent visits to a therapist and mental coach ensured he could bring himself back into the headspace should he stray. Campbell knew winning was a possibility, but he wouldn’t let himself think about that as he walked out onto the mats—he’d take things one move at a time.
That November, Campbell was the only climber to top the men’s finals route during the IFSC Oceania Qualifier in Melbourne. His parents were in the crowd watching as he clipped the final draw and collapsed inward, his hands covering his face as he was lowered off. By winning the competition, he had secured his ticket to Paris. When Campbell returned to the ground, he found Justin in the crowd. They embraced tightly and kissed.
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