Black Diamond proud to announce that Kai Lightner is now “officially” a Black Diamond Athlete.

Truth be told, Kai Lightner has been part of the BD family for half a decade. That’s right, even before he was on the Today Show, NBC, and winning gold in the Youth World Championships.

Back in 2013, Jeff Pedersen—the CEO of Momentum Indoor Climbing—alerted the Black Diamond R&D team to the obvious potential of a shy 13-year-old kid from Fayetteville, North Carolina. The BD crew got together, chatted with Kai and figured out what equipment he needed to fuel his passion for climbing. BD has been “unofficially” hooking him up ever since.

Since those early days, Kai has become one of the strongest American competition climbers on the World Cup circuit and has been equally psyched to go outside and push his limits. He’s won the lead National Championship (2015) and climbed 5.14d outside (Era Vella, Margalef, Spain). Now he’s training hard for the Olympics in 2020, while continuing to dominate both indoors and out.