David Lama

David Lama (4 August 1990 to 16 April 2019) was an Austrian rock climber and alpinist, the son of a Nepalese mountain guide and an Austrian mother from Innsbruck. His talent was noticed at the age of five by the Himalayan veteran Peter Habeler, and he joined a competition climbing team coached by Reinhold Scherer. He won the European Youth Cup in 2004 and 2005, and in 2006 the rules of the International Federation for Sport Climbing were changed so that he could enter the Senior World Cup at fifteen. He won both a lead and a bouldering World Cup final in his first season, became European champion in competition lead climbing in 2006 and in bouldering in 2007, won the overall World Cup ranking in 2008 and placed third in the lead discipline at the 2009 World Championships. He retired from competition in 2011 to concentrate on mountaineering, making the first free ascent of the Compressor Route on Cerro Torre and in 2018 a solo first ascent of Lunag Ri in the Himalayas, which earned a posthumous Piolet d'Or in 2019.