More than a medal: Māia's comeback a victory over hurt

Newsroom

a day ago

Returning to the international climbing stage after a year of physical and mental anguish, Rachel Māia experienced emotional whiplash.
First came the crushing low of one wrong move on the wall – feeling defeated, doubting her strength, questioning if she was even ready to face the heights of international competition so soon after surgery.
Then came the soaring high of getting her head back in the game – with the help of a roped-in cheer squad – attacking the wall with renewed determination, and snatching a bronze medal at the Para Climbing World Cup in Salt Lake City.
Back at home in Whanganui, her celebrations tempered by a bout of Covid, Māia admits the medal is less about the bling, and more about the battle of the past year.
'It means the world to me, because at points it felt like I was fighting for my life last year,' the 42-year-old single mum of three says. 'I was just barely existing; I was really fighting through it.
'To come back and know I can hold my own and keep up just proves that you can put your health and your wellbeing first. It's not worth burning out for something shiny.
'If you look after yourself, do the mahi and build your community and your support, your goals can still exist, and you can still be a high achiever in amongst the dysfunction, the disability and the pain. That's incredible.'
Rachel Māia proudly displays her World Cup bronze medal. Photo: Santi Vega Castro
Māia, a below-the-knee amputee, was the first Kiwi climber – able-bodied or disabled – to win a World Cup medal, a silver in 2022. She backed it up with a bronze at the world championships the following year.
But in 2024, she chose to take a year away from her sport – for surgery on her 'good' leg, and to focus on her mental health.
Her long-term goal is to compete at the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, where Para climbing will make its debut. Last week she learned her AL2 classification – climbers with at least one leg amputation or limb deficiency – will be among the eight medal events in LA.
Naturally, she's over the moon. But LA is still three years away, and Māia knows she needs to find her own funding to get to key events like the world championships in South Korea in September, if she's to qualify.
And right now, Māia is still living in a world of pain.
It's been 25 years since the accident that shattered Māia's life. At a school climbing competition, the teenager fell while bouldering and landed awkwardly – severely damaging her left ankle and breaking her right.
Eighteen years passed before she returned to climbing to 'claim some life back'; she finished fourth at the 2018 Para climbing world championships, becoming New Zealand's first international Para climber.
The following year, after enduring nine operations, Māia made the life-changing decision to have her left leg amputated below the knee. She realised a prosthetic would give her greater mobility to do more with her kids.
Māia has had more operations since – the latest on her right ankle last year. She broke the joint again late in 2023, in a 'small tumble' while bouldering in Switzerland's Magic Wood.
'This ankle now has the same condition that my left one had before it was amputated – caused by underlying hypermobility, a previous trauma from my original accident, and two decades of compensating for my left leg,' Māia says.
'The degenerative condition in my joint from the accident when I was 16 was catching up to me.' Māia's orthopaedic surgeon found a lot of wear and tear to the ankle that required surgery.
Rachel Māia prepares to climb. Photo: Slobodan Miskovic @xsloba/IFSC.
Afterwards, Māia decided to take a longer route back to recovery and a return to climbing. 'I felt I just needed to slow down,' she says.
'As women, or mothers, we have a tendency to not step back and take a rest until we crack before we hit burnout. We feel we need a medical reason to rest.
'I wanted to learn from past mistakes and give myself permission to rest without burnout, without breaking. But that being said it was still one of the hardest mental health years of my life.'
Māia stepped away from competition to focus on her family and her home – which had been demolished internally to make it wheelchair friendly.
'There was a point where I was coming home and crawling around on cold concrete, and there were tools and building stuff everywhere, my wheelchair wouldn't fit through the doorways and there was no heating. I ended up living in a hotel with my son for a couple of weeks,' she says.
The renovations are now finished and are 'life altering,' she says. 'I didn't realise how low my living standards were and how much energy was going into providing for a family. I was falling into the oven, tripping over my crutches trying to put food in and burning my arms. There was a lot of crying on the bathroom floor,' she says. 'Now I can cook and do the dishes in my wheelchair.'
Some major challenges remain for Māia. She doesn't have a climbing wall to train on in Whanganui, so it's a four-hour round trip driving to either Wellington or Turangi – an excursion she has to fit in during school hours.
'There's a very delicate balance trying to get some time on the wall and to stay healthy when you're coping with no sleep, mental health, pain and basic existence some days,' she says.
After a disappointing first climb, Rachel Māia is thrilled to make it to the AL2 women's final. Photo: Slobodan Miskovic @xsloba/IFSC
Māia lives with chronic nerve pain in her residual left limb. 'After two amputation surgeries and multiple procedures trying to alleviate it, the pain is just raging,' she says. 'Some days I have 10 out of 10 pains for two or three days straight.
'Once you lie down at night and there's nothing to entertain your thoughts, all there is is screaming pain. So I don't get a fully restful sleep, it's medicated, and that's not great for recovery. But I find going to the gym helps me get out of the pain cave.'
Māia was a New Zealand team of one at last month's World Cup in Salt Lake City – her comeback to the international stage. That's not unusual for her to travel without a coach, manager or physiotherapist, and paying her own way there.
Initially, she wasn't going to compete at the World Cup, because she only returned to training 'full throttle' at the start of this year. But she needed an event to get her competition ready before the world championships – and she didn't want to 'waste the kindness and generosity' of family and friends who'd fundraised for her to get there.
But when she did her first qualifier climb in the competition in Salt Lake City, she seriously wondered if it was too soon.
The night before, she had watched a video of a forerunner climbing the route she'd face in competition. 'I got very obsessed that I had to do this one move a particular way, and I had to do it fast. And I was wrong,' says Māia, who found herself in seventh place, doubting she could come back from that error of judgment.
'Then some friends gave me a pep talk. I could sit in the narrative that I don't have the resources, so I can't keep up with these women who train on world class facilities. Or I could sit in the narrative, 'Why not me, and why not today?' So I went out there with that fight.'
Without any team-mates, Māia recruited a cheer squad of her own. She gave her spare New Zealand uniform to her friend, Chilean Paralympic skier Santi Vega Castro. 'He helped me work through my decision to amputate my leg five years ago, so it was really meaningful to see him at the bottom of the wall, in a Kiwi uniform,' Māia says.
She also approached a row of medics stationed beneath the climb and asked them to bring some noise for her final qualifier. 'These wāhine, all complete strangers, were fully invested in my climb. I had so much fun on that route – I felt so powerful, strong and ready,' Māia says.
It elevated her to second place and into the final, where she won bronze on a countback.
Rachel Māia celebrates with friend and fellow amputee Santi Vega Castro. Photo: Slobodan Miskovic @xsloba/IFSC
'You can get hung up on, 'There's a lot going against me; I don't have a climbing wall in the same city',' Māia says. 'But on the flip side, it's very motivating to feel you're coming from a situation that's not well resourced, so when you accomplish something like this, the highs are so much higher. You're like, 'Holy heck, I did this thing and yeah, I had to fight for it'.'
Māia is back training on the small 'spray wall' – a board packed with climbing holds in her home shed, which helps build her strength. She's not worried about suffering further damage to her legs through climbing.
'It's low impact, and I'm relying on my upper body strength and moving fluidly through problems, so I'm very safe. I don't take big whips [falls] anymore,' she says.
'My sport creates a lot of functional strength, which should prevent more damage over time – because your muscles and ligaments are stronger, it stops the joint from collapsing in on itself and provides stability.
'The thing I'm most worried about right now is, 'How do I fund this?' It's terrifying – on top of living with chronic pain and disability it's just another anxiety that prevents you from coming out at your best.'
Māia has consistently finished in the top four at major competitions over the past three years, and she won bronze at the last world championships in Bern in 2023. But she knows that it's not unusual for athletes from minority sports to be self-funded.
Her dream lies ahead in Los Angeles.
'When you look at climbing, it's so athletic, so powerful, that it belongs in the Olympics and the Paralympics,' Māia says. 'It will be an incredible opportunity for people to see that it's possible to go down to their local gym and say, 'Hey, I need some people in my life. I need some community. I need something to get up for each day. Can you help me on a wall?'
'That's how it was for me – living in chronic pain, lying on the lounge floor in front of the fire while my kids went to school, unable to exist outside of pain. Then I went to a climbing gym and said, 'I need some help'. And here I am, sitting here with a bronze medal around my neck, with the knowledge I can do it and there could be a gold out there for me.
'I don't want to just exist. I want to live a life that has impact. I hope when other mothers look at me, they believe they can create the life they deserve, whatever their dream is.'