‘I’m a pregnant woman making choices’: Shauna Coxsey on climbing – and the ‘bullies’ who want her to stop

The week her baby is due, Shauna Coxsey is, as usual, at her local climbing centre in Sheffield. The British Olympic climber has scaled climbing walls and rocks throughout her pregnancy, and videos shared on her Instagram account show her making her way gracefully and powerfully upwards, in control of her body, as she switches holds to accommodate her growing bump.

Her decision drew criticism – as she knew it would – and she was forced to hit back at the online “bullying”. For a start, she says, with nearly 450,000 Instagram followers, she knows social media “is a place where you’re going to get criticised, regardless of what you say”. But she had also seen the reaction other women have faced. “One of my good friends, who is incredibly strong and confident, stopped climbing because she couldn’t be bothered with the judgment and the funny looks she got in her late pregnancy,” says Coxsey. “The idea that someone would stop doing something they absolutely love because of the judgment; it’s so sad we’re in a position where that happens still.”

She knows not every climber can keep climbing through pregnancy, but wants people to know that for others, “it is possible. I think it’s important we share those positive stories, and we know that there is a choice. It’s not the case that we all have to go and sit on the sofa for nine months.”

Coxsey is, of course, not the first woman to climb while pregnant. The British climber Alison Hargreaves scaled the north face of the Eiger while nearly six months pregnant in 1988, and other athletes, such as the French rock climber Caroline Ciavaldini, have continued with the sport throughout pregnancy. “I have friends who are pregnant that are still climbing,” Coxsey says. “They’re climbing