Introduction

Janja Garnbret (SLO, 1999)

The GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) and Sport Climbing's first women's Olympic champion. Hailing from the small but disproportionately-good-at-climbing country of Slovenia, Janja Garnbret was surrounded by IFSC heros and a band of talented contemporaries from a young age, when she started climbing at 7 years old. Garnbret has set so many records and won so many events in competition climbing that she has few accolades left to achieve. Garnbret has won back-to-back World Championships in Boulder and Combined in 2018 and 2019, and also reclaimed the Lead title in 2019; she’s the only athlete to have won a clean-sweep of all six Bouldering World Cup events in a season (2019) – in which she also topped qualification and semi-final rounds, completing 74/78 of the boulders put in front of her – and has won ten World Cup overall titles (across Lead, Boulder and Combined). In 2019, she did the triple of Lead, Boulder and Combined at the IFSC World Championships in Hachioji, where she deservedly earned her #1 seed ranking for the Tokyo Games. In 2021, she broke another record, winning her eighth Boulder World Cup in a row; the most consecutive victories in IFSC World Cup events. In 2021, Garnbret overcame significant pressure from fans and herself to become Sport Climbing's first women's Olympic champion, winning the Boulder and Lead rounds in the final after a shaky start in Speed in the qualification round.

Although she has won more World Cups and competed in more events in Lead, Garnbret’s rapid transition to Boulder events from 2017 onwards was staggering to watch. Garnbret’s gutsy, high-risk climbing style and broad movement repertoire has redefined modern dynamic climbing and attracted the interest of coaches, so much so that a move has been named after her – the “Janja”. German movement expert Udo Neumann commented: ‘I'm fascinated with how she keeps the mechanical costs of her movements low. She does this by making pendular movements, mixing and matching trajectories of her limbs to continually exchange potential and kinetic energy to optimally conserve energy. In addition, she typically has very little collisional energy losses. The passage between two movements happens smoothly without abrupt changes in the path of her body centre of mass.’ Like any champion, though, it’s not only her physical capabilities that land her on the top step of the podium; Garnbret is only occasionally rattled, and generally climbs with the mindset that she’s competing to be the best she can be, rather than battling against her competitors.

Qualification route

IFSC World Championships Bern 2023: 1st Place (Boulder + Lead)

A 1st place in Bern following a tricky toe injury clearly meant a lot to Garnbret as she qualified once again for her second Olympics as top seed. A convincing win in Boulder followed by a second rank in Lead gave her enough points to secure a win over Ai Mori (JPN). 

Trivia

Garnbret’s "worst-ever" World Cup result in Lead or Boulder is a 13th place in Kranj, 2019. She has only ever missed a Boulder World Cup final (top 6) once, and two Lead finals.

UKC prediction

1st place

Can Garnbret win back-to-back Olympic titles? Although Garnbret remains dominant in Boulder, Ai Mori (JPN) is regularly outperforming her in Lead— especially on endurance-based routes that are common in the new Boulder + Lead format. The increased expectation and attention that she will receive following her success in Tokyo 2020 is also not to be underestimated. 

Qualification route

IFSC World Championships Bern.