8 minute read
Shauna Coxsey
THE ONLY WAY IS UP
Shauna Coxey’s bouldering skills have made her the UK’s most successful competition climber. Now she faces a new challenge: This summer, Coxey and her peers will compete in three disciplines, two of which she has no high-level experience in. This is the story of a world champion that had
Gripping stuff: Coxsey has her eye on the gold medal
hauna Coxsey has no respect for gravity. The most successful competitive climber in British history has spent her entire life flouting the Earth’s planetary pull. Right now, she’s dangling breezily from an overhanging wedge of artificial rock at a bouldering cavern in Plymouth, Devon. Yet Coxsey seems as relaxed as a bat at bedtime.
She hoiks her right foot onto a fluorescent pink handhold above her head, sways her body right, then left to gain momentum – setting her long, blonde ponytail swinging like a pendulum – and launches herself into the air with a dynamic move that appears to be another breach of natural law. Then, using just three fingers on her right hand, she catches herself on a hold the size of a hot cross bun. Climbers call this a ‘dyno’, but to mere mortals she might as well be flying.
The 28-year-old from Runcorn, Cheshire, is the best female climber there is right now. Or, more accurately, the best female boulderer. Bouldering is a climbing discipline that involves the gymnastic negotiation of short routes, or ‘problems’, close to the ground and without a rope. This demanding sport
requires climbers to think quickly in competition to plot a route to the top of a wall, against the clock – and Coxsey excels at it.
In June 2017, she won the Women’s Bouldering title at the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Cup for the second year in a row. Then, in 2019, she won two bronze medals at the IFSC Climbing World Championships in Hachioji, Japan, in bouldering and the combined event. She’s also the third woman ever to scale a V14-difficulty rock face. Oh, and she has an MBE for services to the sport. Three is the magic number
But, surprisingly for someone at the forefront of a professional sport, when in August 2016 it was announced that climbing would make its debut this summer, Coxsey knew that she would have to become a student again for what will be, without doubt, the toughest test of her career so far. The catch is: athletes must compete in three separate climbing disciplines – lead, speed and bouldering – and Coxsey has almost no top-level experience in two of them. “It’s like asking Usain Bolt to run a marathon, then do an egg-and-spoon race,” she laughs. “They’re not just different disciplines, they’re completely different sports.”
Unlike bouldering, lead climbing requires competitors to tether themselves to a 15m wall for safety as they climb as high as they can. Competitive lead-climbing events were first established in the mid-’80s in Italy and were staged on real rock, but in their modern form they take place on towering, eye-catching structures. Then there’s speed climbing, which is not only the oldest of the disciplines – its competitive origins date back to 1940s Russia – but also the most explosive as climbers scurry up 15m-high walls in under eight seconds.
The triathlon format has proved controversial; purists have branded it a gimmick that ridicules the art of each specialist discipline. But, after a lot of thought, Coxsey has accepted the challenge. “In a lot of ways it makes sense,” she says. “It will showcase our sport. And I never imagined in my wildest dreams that climbing would be an Olympic sport. It’s such a young sport. This is like someone going, ‘Oh, you can go to Mars if you want.’ It feels that unlikely.”
Coxsey decided to approach the task with characteristic gusto. “I can’t think of one person who stands out in all three disciplines. But I’ve always been a person who, if I’m motivated to do something, is willing to give 110 per cent.”
Coxsey has been climbing since the age of four
Finding her forte
Coxsey has always been this way when it comes to her sport. “Asking me what I love about climbing is like asking someone why they like walking or breathing,” she shrugs. Her obsession began at the age of four. “She was sat on my knee, watching TV,” recalls her dad Mike, an IT consultant. “And a film about [French freeclimber] Catherine Destivelle came on. Shauna looked up at me and said, ‘Daddy, can I do that?’ I said, ‘I don’t see why not.’” And so it began. “It became a thing we did on a Sunday,” recalls Mike. “She’d come over and we’d spend all day climbing. She wanted to learn. She never tired of it. Not once.” They would spend the next decade driving across the UK, to and from competitions. As bouldering became more widely recognised as a distinct climbing discipline thanks to YouTube videos and specialist blogs, Coxsey was part of an explosion in popularity of this accessible, equipment-light sport. By the time she was 19, it was clear she had a rare ability to overcome its mental and physical tests, and she decided to spend her gap year seeing if she could make it as a pro. Nine years on, Coxsey still hasn’t made it to university. As well as advancing her own skills, she’s furthered her sport by founding the Women’s Climbing Symposium, an annual event aimed at inspiring more women to take up the sport that now attracts hundreds of female climbers each year. Winning is about mind and body
So what makes Coxsey better than all those other dedicated climbers? “A lot of people think climbing is about upper body strength, but you don’t need to do a pull-up to climb a wall,” she says, before effortlessly performing a pull-up to prove her point. “Bouldering is only 20 per cent about strength. To win, you have to be in control of your mind even more than your body. It’s about working out routes before you climb, like a puzzle.”
This, it seems, is one of the things that sets Coxsey apart from other climbers. “What makes Shauna the best isn’t her strength,” says her trainer and long-term friend Leah Crane. “It’s an understanding of the climb before she does it. It’s about route reading, finger strength and coordination. And it’s the ability to bring them out first go – not third go and not fifth go – that’s leaving everyone else behind.”
When Coxsey looks at a boulder, she doesn’t see a boulder but a Rubik’s Cube – unfurled and made of plywood and resin. And her ability to quickly solve these mental conundrums translates into physical grace: she doesn’t so much climb a wall as dance across it, swinging, twisting, thrusting and gliding. “When I’m on a wall, I’m not thinking about what I need to do because I’ve already worked it out,” she says. “It’s almost like playing chess against the wall. You’re always thinking two or three moves ahead.”
At 163cm tall, Coxsey is petite but strong, and her muscular grip and agility are key to her success
Injuries are a blessing
There are few people who could be described as having athletic fingers, but Coxsey is one of them. They’re key to her success, as well Coxsey knows from trying to get by without one of them. In January 2018, she snapped the tendon inside her right ring finger almost clean in half. “I was climbing outdoors and I went to go for a move and it went bang! Actually, it was more of a pop; a really loud, satisfying pop. Everyone heard it go. It turned out to be a rupture of my A2 pulley tendon.” that urge. She’s broken her leg, dislocated shoulders, had a litany of muscle tears up and down her arms, damaged cartilage in her knees and ruptured fingers. “If you can stay positive, you can make use of the time and come back stronger,” Coxsey says. “I never want to come back and just be as good as I was – I want to come back better. And now I am.”
There aren’t many sports in which a pulled finger would be more disruptive. But Coxsey finds new possibilities in such setbacks. “Injuries are always a blessing in disguise,” she says. “They give you an opportunity to work on something you wouldn’t otherwise have time for.”
That injury forced her to work on “glute strength, leg strength, explosivity”. That, and climbing one-handed. “Not being able to climb makes me want to climb even more,” she says. Over the years, the world champion has had plenty of practice at resisting Learning and improving
Like many people, Coxsey saw her optimism tested in 2020. When COVID-19 struck, events were called off and most climbing centres in the UK were closed. On top of that, she and her fiancé, fellow climber Ned Feehally, had to postpone their wedding. “I am good at focusing on what I can control and accepting what I can’t,” she says. “For sure it hasn’t been easy during the pandemic, but I have been focusing on what I can train at home. Physically I am way fitter on the wall than I have ever been and that’s entirely down to my coaching team being so innovative and passionate.”
Although her training routine has changed in a lot of ways, her goals haven’t changed at all. “The focus still remains for me and my team to ensure that my body is as resilient as possible and that I feel healthy, fit, strong and, most importantly, happy [competing] across all three disciplines,” she explains.
A victory this year would be the pinnacle of a climbing career that already contains some extraordinary accomplishments, but Coxsey isn’t counting. So what is it about her approach that brings her so much success? “The Games still feel so surreal to me and there is a lot of pressure,” she says. “But I just want to be the best possible climber I can be. Learning and improving are all that motivate me.”
