Adam Ondra, Alex Megos these two are pretty much household names in competition climbing at the moment, and you are starting to see Jakob Schubert mentioned more and more with these two legends.
Jakob started climbing fairly late start in comparison to Alex or Adam who both started the sport at aged 6, Jakob found his passion for climbing at age 12 which is still fairly young all things considered but you have to wonder is an extra 6 years of development in climbing something that can’t be ignored?
Born in Innsbruck its likely Jakob was inspired by the kletterzentrum which is known to be the mecca for indoor lead training. Even Adam Ondra visit’s the Kletterzentrum to ensure he is in top shape for lead competitions.
Jakob started competing in the youth world championships at age 14 and while he got off to a shaky start he quickly adapted and went on to crush the youth and junior events placing 1st in the 2007-9 Junior events.
Making the transition into the adult competitions is always incredibly hard, you go from competing with youths of an extremely similar age and experience to battling it out with climbing legends. All of which might have 5-10 years more experience and training than you. However, this didn’t phase Jakob he quickly started to dominate the adult lead frequently placing on the podium.
However, in 2011, Jakob started competing in bouldering as well as lead, and not only competing but Jakob was winning as well! Seeing his first gold medal in 2012 Jakob excelled in both disciplines of the sport.
While being an extremely accomplished competition climber Jakob is no pushover when it comes to the outdoor scene. Last year in 2019 Jakob managed to be the third person in the world to climb Perfecto Mundo 9b+(5.15c) with the first ascent belonging to Alex Megos. Jakob has also had the second ascent on several 9a+ routes such as the famous Joe Mama by Chris Sharma and La Planta da Shiva after Adam Ondra.
Jakob is definitely one of the climbers in the running for gold at the Olympics. It’s safe to say Austria is lucky to have such a strong climber and has a strong chance to be a front runner in the Olympics. It was recently mentioned in the ISFC Briançon that Jakob has vowed to get even strong after meeting adam for a small training session. Im excited to see this already insanely strong climber get even better and even more excited to see him compete in the olympics.
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