No Straight Lines | The Story of Angelino Zeller
October 31, 2023Life is not linear. The path of human existence is not a straight line from A to B, no matter how well you may try to plan out your career, your family or your future. In the end, it is impossible to predict how things will pan out.
Angelino Zeller knows this better than most. Born and raised in Graz, the Austrian spent his formative years chasing adrenalin and adventure in the mountains of his native Styria – skiing, climbing and paragliding. He became an industrial climber by profession, putting his head for heights and his natural athletic ability to good use.
Then, in 2017, everything changed. Zeller had hiked up the Schöckl, the much-loved local mountain that towers above the city of Graz. It’s a popular destination for family fun and extreme adventure alike: the peak boasts a summer toboggan run, hiking trails and a gondola cable car. But it also attracts mountain bikers, who consider the permanent downhill trail to be one of the most demanding trails in Austria, and 4WD experts, who come to tackle its notoriously steep and rocky test track. The mountain is also a big draw for paragliders and hang gliders, who launch themselves from its summit plateau to take advantage of the excellent thermals and currents.
But on that fateful day, a freak gust of wind caught Zeller’s paraglider. It folded like a lawn chair. Zeller crashed to the ground, falling from 20 metres. “I then noticed that I couldn’t get up and immediately knew that it was probably something serious,” recalls Angelino today.
A new path
What followed was a long and painful series of complex surgeries, followed by gruelling physiotherapy and rehab. The doctors told him that he would no longer be able to walk. Zeller would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
He remembers: “The questions that are probably common in such a situation came to mind: ‘Why is this happening to me? How will I be able to shower or dress? And how should I drive a car?’” But soon his perspective changed. He remains relentlessly optimistic. “I’ve never fallen into a hole. My grandparents, parents, everyone immediately had the attitude that you have to make the best of it now.”
So, that’s what he did. “Over time you realise that none of this is stressful. At least in my case. My paralysis is at chest level – so I have all the functions in my upper body. I can actually still do everything almost like before.”
Rediscovering climbing
This included climbing. He returned to indoor climbing as part of his post-accident rehab, beginning to train regularly in a pursuit to master the art of climbing without using his legs. In 2019, just two years after his accident, Zeller won the world paraclimbing championship title in Briançon, in the AL1 class. In 2021 he became world champion again in Moscow.
He won his first World Cup in 2021 and triumphed again in 2023. The latter feat was particularly notable – since there were too few athletes competing in the AL1 category, Zeller instead competed in the more difficult RP1 category, which included athletes with some leg function (such as hypertension, ataxia or limited muscle strength). Zeller outclimbed the rest of the field, despite the fact that he cannot use his legs at all, relying entirely on arm strength and momentum to get up the wall. “I can use the hip flexors like a pendulum”, he says. “This means that I cannot support or stabilise myself, but I can use the momentum specifically for long moves.” When climbing, Zeller combines his immense upper body strength with targeted swinging to get from one hold to the next – effectively, completing a near-superhuman series of one-arm pull-ups. It’s an impressive combination of extraordinary speed and power endurance. His coach and climbing partner Alex Guster has nicknamed him ‘the traction machine’. On the international paraclimbing circuit, he’s been called ‘the rocket’.
From the gym to the great outdoors
On August 10, 2023, Zeller won his third consecutive World Championship in Bern. But even with his remarkable success in indoor paraclimbing, he wasn’t satisfied. As a lover of the great outdoors, he yearned to return to climbing outside, on real rock.
That wasn’t all – he wanted to lead outside. In competitive paraclimbing, athletes are top-roped. But Zeller’s real passion is lead climbing. Since he can’t use his legs, his technique involves clipping in with one hand only, while hanging on to the wall with the other. That he is able to do this at all is pretty incredible in itself. As Guster puts it, “the whole body is at the limit”. But Zeller is used to operating at the limit. His next challenge is to lead-climb hard routes on real rock.
Due to his physical impairment, the number of outdoor rock routes that Zeller is able to climb is limited – for one thing, they need to be accessible via wheelchair. Secondly, they must be overhanging enough to enable him to swing from one hold to the next. It is this requirement that always ensures the routes have a high degree of difficulty. Why? Because climbing an overhang of more than 90 degrees on small crimps and pockets, without using your legs, quickly leads you into the terrain of extreme sport climbing.
The Sarree2000 route in the Aosta Valley is a good example. Back in 2015, Italian professional climber Stefano Ghisolfi climbed this 8a+ route without using his feet, simply to prove that it could be done. So, when Angelino saw the video years later, he knew he had to try it.
Zeller travelled to Italy in 2022. But during his first attempts in the Aosta Valley, he realised that his even masses of indoor competition training and experience only gave him a limited advantage in outdoor rock climbing. After a few sessions, however, he was finally able to resolve the difficult sequences on small crimps.
This success motivated Zeller to continue searching for other testing climbs on real rock. It’s a challenge that, for him, now far outstrips the attraction of indoor competition. “My biggest motivation is not to win championships or titles. This comes naturally through training. My biggest wishes are to be able to carry out climbing projects on rocks of a certain difficulty that no one before me has ever managed with just their hands and arms.”
Zeller is now aged 26, and incredibly, he is climbing beyond the level of difficulty that he was before his accident. Where he goes from here is impossible to predict. Even he doesn’t yet know his limits – but pushing the boundaries of possibility is perhaps what he finds most exciting about the future. “The real barrier is not the physical ability. If you find your own access, define your own goal, you will find purpose in it. And that’s why I am at the wall”, he says.
CREDITS: Photography by David Schickengruber, courtesy of Black Diamond, except the Shöckl, by Przemyslaw Iciak.