Britain’s Top World Cup Woman and an Austrian Veteran at IFSC Hamilton

Tough Austrian and British Contenders

Continuing Coverage IFSC World Cup Hamilton Ontario June 1-2

In our continuing coverage of the upcoming IFSC World Cup Canada, we look at Team Great Britain’s Shauna Coxsey and Team Austria’s Jakob Schubert, two athletes receiving different support from their respective federations.

20-year-old Shauna Coxsey is often Great Britain’s lone representative at the World Cups. She is third in the current ranking and came third at Log Dragomer in Slovenia in May and tenth at Innsbruck and fourth at Kitzbuhel Austrian in April. Coxsey says she hasn’t had much of a chance to develop as an outdoor climber, yet she has sent several V12s including Jack’s Broken Heart, at Magic Woods in Switzerland, and Pilgrim in Parisella’s Cave in Wales, a well-known training haunt of many top UK boulderers, including Malcolm Smith, who put up many of the problems there.

Aside from her physical strength, Coxsey is mentally one of the toughest competitor on the circuit. Despite markedly less support from the BMC when compared to her Austrian and French counterparts, Coxsey have committed to competing at the top tier of the sport, and clawed her way to being one of the top WC finishers consistently. Coxsey is also tough enough to have faced down and come back from several injuries, including a broken leg from a fall during the same trip when she sent Jack’s Broken Heart.

Extroverted and experienced Austrian Jakob Schubert, still only 22, is a product of the ultra-successful Austrian federation’s investment into competition climbing, along with Kiliian Fischuber and Anna Stohr, who kicked off our series, and Angela Eiter, one of the winningest females in World Cup history. Schubert is best known as a lead climbing competitor, having won a record seven consecutive lead World Cups en route to taking the overall in 2011. But Schubert is not merely a lead specialist, in this year’s Bouldering World Cups alone, he was first in Kitzbuhel, and second in Chongquing, China. Schubert is also versatile away from the plastic arena, with multiple 5.14d ascents on rock, and Papichulo 5.15a at Oliana, Spain as his top redpoint to date.

Both of these tough climbers will be giving it their all and adding their exciting performances to an already high-powered roster at Hamilton.