Janja Garnbret is a Slovenian rock climber and sport climber who has won multiple lead climbing and bouldering events. Garnbret won her first international title in the lead competition of the 2014 World Youth B Championships. In July 2015, just after turning 16, she started competing in the senior category of the Lead Climbing World Cup. Since then, she participated in 31 Lead Climbing World Cup events, missing the podium in only four of them. In 2016, aged 17, Garnbret won the seasonal titles of the IFSC Climbing World Cup in lead and combined, World Championships in lead climbing, and World Youth A Championships in both Lead climbing and Bouldering. From 2016 to 2018, she was awarded the seasonal title in both lead climbing and combined disciplines. In both 2018 and 2019, she won the World Championships in bouldering and combined, and also reclaimed the lead title in 2019. In 2019, at age 20, Garnbret became the first athlete to win all Bouldering World Cup events in a season. Throughout six events, she placed first in six qualifications, four semifinals, and six finals, topping 74 out of 78 boulder problems overall.
Early life
She began climbing at the age of seven. She competed for the first time at a national competition, when she was eight. Her first major competition was the 2013 European Youth Championships in Bouldering, which she won.
Competitions
In 2015, her first year of eligibility for the IFSC Climbing World Cup, she placed seventh in the overall lead climbing standings. In the same year, she also placed first in a notable Swedish bouldering event, the "La Sportiva Legends Only", ahead of Shauna Coxsey, Mélissa Le Nevé, :de:Juliane Wurm|Juliane Wurm, and Anna Stöhr. She also won the bouldering gathering Melloblocco in 2015. In 2016, she won most of the IFSC competitions in which she participated. She won the World Cup in Lead and Combined disciplines, the World Championships in Lead, and the World Youth Championships in Lead and Bouldering. Garnbret also won the Adidas Rockstars 2016 contest, defeating Jessica Pilz in the superfinal. She also won Rock Master in 2016, and then again in 2018. In 2017, she won the World Cup in Lead and Combined disciplines, the Combined title in the European Championships, and she ranked second in Bouldering both at the World Cup and European Championships. In 2018, she defended her World Cup titles in Lead and Combined disciplines, and placed fourth in Bouldering by winning two golds and one silver, after participating in just 3 out of 7 events. Moreover, she won World Championships in both Bouldering and Combined. She was extremely close to also winning the Lead Climbing World Championships, where she earned the silver medal by powerfully topping the final route in 4 minutes and 38 seconds, just 11 seconds slower than Jessica Pilz, who won the Championship. In 2019, she dominated the Bouldering World Cup by solving 74 problems out of 78 and winning every event throughout the season. This feat had never been achieved before in the history of competition climbing. Anna Stöhr was almost able to do the same in 2013, when she won seven Bouldering World Cup events out of eight. In the same year, Garnbret won three out of four disciplines at the 2019 IFSC Climbing World Championships, taking gold in Bouldering, Lead, and Combined. in Munich, Germany
Rock climbing
In addition to her competition climbing career, Janja Garnbret is also an accomplished outdoor climber, completing the ascents of various extremely difficult routes. In 2015 she on-sighted the route Avatar, an route in Pandora, Croatia. The same year she successfully climbed her first, Miza za šest at Kotecnik in her home country of Slovenia. The next year she flashed La Fabelita at Santa Linya in Spain, an sports climbing route. She was given advice by her countrywoman Mina Markovič and climbed the route without apparent struggle in less than 15 minutes. In 2017 she went one step further and clipped the anchor of her first, Seleccio Natural, again at Santa Linya. Just a few days later she climbed her second 9a route, La Fabela pa la Enmienda, also at Santa Linya.
