All right, Alex, I'm curious whether you as an athlete have felt the weight of expectation,

whether it's an expectation that you've imposed on yourself or one that has come from someone else.

I've definitely felt the weight of my own expectations.

I mean, you feel that all the time, like the things that I think I should be able to do or the things that I want to do or the things that I've wanted to do for a long

time, but haven't been able to do. I mean, I definitely feel that sometimes. Maybe less so now

because I've done a lot of things that I've wanted to do for a long, long time. I think there are fewer

external expectations than one might expect, just because there aren't

that many people that know enough about rock climbing to really expect much of you.

You know what I mean?

It's really like only a few of your peers who actually know you and you're climbing well

enough to actually have expectations one way or another.

Everybody else is just kind of like, wow, you're rock climbing?

That's crazy.

Do you think that maybe in the Olympics it's worse because, or like that there could be more

external expectations because people know just enough about the Olympics and maybe not enough

about climbing that they could put that baggage on a competitor?

Oh, I think that the external expectations in competition climbing,

and particularly in the Olympics, has got to be way worse than in any other form of climbing.

If you're going to the Olympics, even if you've never won a World Cup or whatever, you know,

you qualified in some roundabout way and you're going to the Olympics, people are like,

you're an Olympian, you should win. And you're like, realistically, you're just not going to win. You know, it's like most of the competitors going to the Olympics are not, well, you know,

only one of them is going to win and everybody else isn't.

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