By Trevor Stynes
(Reuters) – Aleksandra Miroslaw won Poland’s first gold medal at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday in the women’s speed climbing, having already broken her own world record twice, and a recently unveiled mural in her hometown will now need to be updated.
Miroslaw set the previous record of 6.24 seconds last year, and the two-time world champion’s achievements were the inspiration behind a life-sized mural by artist Michal Cwiek, which had its official opening two weeks ago.
“The inspiration was Aleksandra herself, a girl from my city, Lublin. A petite girl who can run up a 15-metre wall in just over six seconds,” Cwiek told Reuters.
“The best speed climber in the world about whom many people still don’t know. I thought that transferring her climbing route on a 1:1 scale on a building in the city would be extremely interesting and effective.
“At the same time it would show people in a tangible way the scale of difficulty of what this girl is doing.”
The mural features figures of Miroslaw in successive phases of climbing to the height of 15 metres, along with her old world record time and previous medal wins, and was ready in time for the Paris Olympics.
“The timing was carefully planned and the mural was to act as a kind of fan support for Aleksandra from her hometown,” Cwiek said.
“From the start I hoped that after a successful performance at the Olympics I would need to correct the time shown on the mural, and change the information about her achievements.”
Luckily Cwiek didn’t set about changing it immediately after Miroslaw broke her record in the qualifying heats on Monday as she quickly bettered it with a 6.06, and he now hopes the athlete can help out when she returns home with her gold medal.
“I dream of persuading Aleksandra to spray-paint a stencil with her new world record on the wall herself,” he said.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes in Krakow; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
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