Katie Bone American Ninja Warrior & Olympic Contender While Managing Diabetes

By TANIA SOUSSAN

If Katie Bone ever found herself with some spare time, she’d gladly use it to sleep. The 17-year-old high school junior gets up early and stays up late to work out five to seven hours a day at Stone Age Climbing Gym. In between, she focuses on schoolwork. And throughout everything she’s doing, she monitors and adjusts her blood sugar levels to keep her type 1 diabetes in check.

That’s what it takes to be an American Ninja Warrior, a U.S. Olympic Climbing Team contender and an aspiring college student.

“It’s definitely hard,” Bone said. “It’s constantly go, go, go. I don’t have a lot of down time.”

But climbing is also something she loves doing. “Everything about it feels right,” she says. “I get to push myself, physically and mentally, past my limit over and over again. I feel like me 100% of the time.”

Bone first tried rock climbing when she was about 8 years old and instantly fell in love. A year later, she joined the New Mexico Mojo team. She also works out once a week at the NinjaForce obstacle gym in Albuquerque.

Climbing coach Aaron Strömberg said Bone is a driven, “outstanding athlete and also an outstanding human.”

“She’s a super smart, determined, competitive young person who never gives up,” he said, adding that she’s also very kind.

Since she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 11, Bone has had to manage her blood sugar levels. Type 1 diabetes, known as T1D, is a chronic condition in which the pancreas makes little or no insulin, something the body needs to allow sugar to enter cells to produce energy. People with the condition must use supplemental insulin, diet and lifestyle to prevent other health problems. Bone manages her diabetes with a tubeless insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor. She isn’t shy about letting the public see the devices, even having them on full view while competing on American Ninja Warrior.

“I've always been super open about it. It’s a part of me, part of my story and I’ve never found a reason to try and hide it,” she said. “If it could change one life, then it's worth it for me.”

Not long after being diagnosed, Bone became involved with JDRF, a research foundation searching for a cure for type 1 diabetes. She spoke at the nonprofit’s New Mexico gala and traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2019 as a JDRF delegate to lobby for T1D awareness.

Today she is an advocate, especially for children, and aims to use any opportunity to inspire and represent others with T1D. She has heard from many families who say she has impacted them or their children. Her signature phrase is, “I am greater than my highs and lows.”

Sometimes, though, there are a lot of highs and lows to manage. Hormones, stress and sleep schedules all affect her blood sugar levels, and every day is different. Bone said she also has good and bad training days and good and bad competition days.

“You can’t let one session define you,” she said. “Bad days are the days you can learn a lot from.”

This spring Bone was at competitions almost every weekend, including the U.S. Olympic Team trials. Strömberg said she definitely has the potential to compete in the Olympics, where sport climbing debuted in 2020. Last year, she placed second at the USA Climbing Youth World Championships for speed climbing in which two climbers go head-tohead in identical, side-by-side climbs.

Her training and experience competing as a climber have helped her at American Ninja Warrior. Bone was on the junior version of the show in 2020 and became one of the youngest females ever to make it to the Las Vegas finals of the adult version when she debuted on season 14, which aired in June 2022. Competitors on the adult show must be at least 15.

“I think rock climbers who get into Ninja Warrior have a distinct advantage,” Strömberg said, adding that Bone’s finger strength is “off the charts, super high.” He said rock climbing also has a huge mental component that teaches competitors to perform well in stressful situations. At climbing competitions, the athletes are in isolation with their coaches until they go out for their turn on a climb they’ve never seen before and in front of a large crowd.

Katie Bone has type 1 diabetes and doesn't hide her insulin pump and glucose monitor so that she can be a model to other young people with the disease.

American Ninja Warrior adds another layer of challenge to Bone’s life because the show is filmed at night, forcing Bone to flip her sleep-awake schedule. This spring, she spent one week on the Universal Studios backlot in Burbank, Calif., filming season 15 and another week for season 16 of the show.

In between, she returned to Albuquerque to catch up on her high school classes. Bone is homeschooled and also takes dual-credit courses at CNM.

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