“Climbing is one of the most natural things we can do as humans,” says Shauna Coxsey, with a beaming smile that exudes the confidence and conviction of someone entirely at home hanging from a precipice by her fingertips.
Lithe and powerful at work on a climbing wall, she displays a natural grace and elegance that instantly appears to corroborate her claim. As a two-times winner of the bouldering World Cup series, Coxsey is the British climber most likely to make the case for her sport at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Climbing will make its Olympic debut in 2020 and the 26-year-old from Runcorn has thrown herself with passionate determination into the task of becoming one of only 20 women who will compete at the Games.
After recovering from a finger tendon injury, Coxsey returned to the circuit with a statement, winning bronze at the opening International Federation of Sport Climbing World Cup meeting of the year in Switzerland last weekend. As she travels to Moscow for the next round beginning on Friday, she knows she has a huge challenge ahead.
“It’s a little bit overwhelming that climbing is going to be part of the Games,” she says. “I am still trying to get my head round it a little bit. I am working harder than ever before but it still seems crazy and surreal. But it is real and it is coming.”
She was watching a film about the French free climber Catherine Destivelle with her father at the age of three when she asked if she could give it a go. Her dad, Mike, agreed and she took to it like a shot at her first climbing session aged four.
Three years later Coxsey entered her first regional competition and qualified for the national final. There was no fairytale victory ending but it was instructive. “There is a video of it. I was crying my eyes out and look like I was having the worst time. I used to wonder: ‘Why did that little girl want to go back and compete?’ Looking back I was just overwhelmed but I know I was inspired. I watched the older girls and thought: ‘That’s where I want to end up.’”
Coxsey won her first national championship when she was nine and began competing internationally at 13. After her A-levels she decided to go professional during a gap year, a bold move in climbing, which is far from awash with money, although she now receives funding as part of the medal support plan, administered by UK Sport.
In 2012, aged 19, she finished third in the IFSC World Cup. In 2016 and 2017 she won consecutive titles, winning four of the seven meetings in each of those seasons. Awarded an MBE in 2016, she is now the most successful British climber in history.
Her success has been in bouldering, and like most climbers she concentrates on one discipline. In Tokyo the competition will, unusually, be a combined event were the climbers must master three variations: bouldering, speed and lead.
Bouldering requires climbers to negotiate short pitches, relatively close to the ground, without a rope, by plotting the best route to the top. It demands fitness and mental agility that matches exceptional dexterity, pitted against the clock.
To make the Olympics, Coxsey is also training for lead and speed. The former sees competitors tethered to a wall and trying to climb as high as they can within a fixed period of time. The latter, which can be traced back to the 1940s, simply requires the 15m ascent be made as quickly as possible. The women’s record stands at 7.32sec.
IFSC
(@IFSClimbing)World record at #IFSCwc Moscow! Anouck Jaubert ties Iuliia Kaplina for fastest vertical woman 🔥 7.32s #speedclimbing pic.twitter.com/7aU4YVgco3
Adapting to all three will be tough. “For bouldering I was training six days a week, up to eight hours a day. Now my regime is stricter than ever. I knew this was going to be hard and it is harder than I thought but I love to keep pushing and making improvements. Doing different things is amazing for motivation.”
Coxsey thought long about what would be required and whether she could do it. The lure of the Games proved impossible to ignore and everything is geared to making this dream a reality, with her first major qualification event being the world championships in Hachioji, Japan, in August.
Coxsey has set herself an Olympic summit to scale but at the very least we know she feels perfectly at home. “The thrill has never faded, it has only grown,” she says. “I can say I absolutely love my sport and I really value that passion.”