‘Nothing could compare’: B.C. speed climber breaks 5-second barrier

Ethan Flynn-Pitcher has spent years chasing fractions of a second. Last week, all that work finally paid off.
The 25-year-old Brentwood resident became the first Canadian to break the five-second barrier in speed climbing during a training run at The Boulders Climbing Gym in Central Saanich on Thursday (Aug. 13), stopping the clock at 4.996 seconds.
Now, he is headed to the World Climbing Pan American Championships in Curitiba, Brazil, from Aug. 22 to 23, where he will try to make the mark offic