Bruce Zou ticks The Game (8C) barefoot

Bruce Zou, who last week did his first 8C, has completed The Game (8C) in Boulder Canyon, and both of them barefoot. In total, it took the 37-year-old 80+ session to repeat the Daniel Woods classical testpiece from 2010. (c) Xinyang Zhou

Can you tell us more about the process taking it down?
The Game took me 4 years of serious work. It caught my eye in 2018 but I couldn’t do any of the hard moves until 2020. I figured out that shoes were blocking my progress. End of 2020, I tried barefoot and did two crux moves in one session. I believe this is my way. However barefoot making the rest of moves way harder…

I start serious in Jan 2021 and made big progress till June 2021. I almost did it but failed at the end on the jug… thing just got into my mind and I was mentally not good.

I realize it’s because my toes were not strong enough to handle the “easier” move which is the sacrifice. Also my fingers are not strong enough to hold the tiny crimp for longer than 10 seconds.

I had to move to WA for my job June 2021, and it became extremely difficult for me to come back. Every night I envision myself sending it. All these memories by recalling the details of the holds, how I grabbed them… I still couldn’t do it for the next 2 seasons… but at the same time I train my fingers and toes every day and climb barefoot outdoors on purpose.

This season it only took me one day to send and I got all the moves back in less than 2hours. Everything feels like yesterday since I had envisioned for over 800+ time in 4 years. It was my longest battle and the most satisfied thing ever in my life.