Jakob Schubert summarizes 2020

Jakob Schubert is one of the contenders being the 8a climber of 2020. Besides flashing The Never Ending Story 8B+, he did 17 boulders 8B as harder as well as ten 9a's. (c) Michael Piccolruaz

Could you please summarize your climbing year 2020?"
Well I obviously trained all three disciplines pretty hard until March where I wanted to have my last Combined test in Moscow. Definitely trained quite a lot of speed as well but for me, the speed training is always something I do extra. I try to do as much lead and boulder as before since at the end of the day the most important thing in combined is still being best at your main disciplines. After the Olympics got cancelled and we didn’t have many comps I took the opportunity to climb outside as much as possible. I‘m really lucky that we have so many great crags close to my home. I was still very thankful that our federation organized a few comps called the Austrian Summer Series though. With these comps, I could see that my preparation for the Olympics was pretty good since I was able to do well in all disciplines. Finally, we had the only Worldcup of the season in Briançon which I wasn’t sure how serious I should take at first. But when Adam came to Innsbruck and I saw how hard he trains and how serious he takes Briancon, I got very psyched as well and tried to get in good lead shape as fast as possible. Briançon was great and I was pretty happy with my climbing which was important for my head since my lead performance in 2019 wasn’t good enough.

Already before Briancon, I started to have problems with my biceps (some inflammation) especially in Speed, so I had to stop training it for almost 3 months, slowly starting with it again right now. I took the time to climb mostly routes outside since that was causing no pain and of course was a lot of fun as well. All in all a good year but definitely a strange one. Can‘t wait to finally be able to travel more again!

What was your best climbing moments in 2020?
Well there are quite a few rememberable moments. The flash of Never Ending Story definitely was special since the whole 2-day trip was amazing and I always wanted to flash this one so once it actually happened I was so psyched! La Force Tranquille both the original and the new direct version are also amazing memories, I just love this boulder problem. Route wise ‚Weiße Rose‘ comes to mind as a special memory of this year, it wasn‘t a hard fight but I send it right after coming out of hard lockdown so it was special in terms of feeling free and strong again 😊