Climb	Type	Suggested Grade	Date of Ascent	Notes
Selecció Natural	Sport Route	9a	29th Dec 2017	Instagram Post
La Fabela por la Enmienda	Sport Route	9a	6th Jan 2018	Instagram Post
Rollito Sharma Extension	Sport Route (Flash)	8c	28th Dec 2015	Instagram Post
La Fabelita	Sport Route (Flash)	8c	2016-2017	Flash
Fish Eye	Sport Route (Onsight)	8c	1st Nov 2021	Instagram Post
American Hustle	Sport Route (Onsight)	8c	3rd Nov 2021	Instagram Post
				Video
Bügeleisen	Boulder	8B+(V14)	2022	Instagram Post
New Base Line	Boulder	8B+(V14)	12th Oct 2023	Instagram Post

Learning the Ropes

Ever since she could walk, Garnbret has shown a natural desire for climbing and competing. What first started as climbing door frames, cabinets and trees, quickly developed into sport climbing after her parents encouraged her to join the local climbing gym at age 7, whilst Garnbret was still in elementary school.

Competition Climbing

With a natural competitive spirit, young Janja wanted to be the best at everything. “I wanted to be the best in school. I had to have the best grades. Then I wanted to be the best in the school athletic competitions, in track and field. I just wanted to be the best” Garnbret stated in an interview with Red Bull.

After joining her local gym, it didn’t take long for Janja’s natural climbing ability to shine through, and by the end of elementary school, had become a prominent member of the Slovenian Youth National Team. 

From then, the accolades started to pile up thick and fast. In 2014, after just one season as a member of the national team, Janja claimed her first international title after winning European Youth B Champion in Lead, an accomplishment she would also repeat again in 2015 and 2016.

Garnbret made her IFSC World Cup Debut in July 2015, just four months after turning 16, the minimum age required to compete in the senior category. Her World Cup debut got off to a strong start, finishing in second place behind her fellow countryman Mina Markovič in her debut competition. Despite numerous podium-worthy performances Garnbret would have to wait until July 2016, and six World Cup events later, before she finally secured the elusive 1st place finish in Chamonix. 

That 2016 season was a particularly impressive year for Garnbret, marking the start of her dominant reign as queen of the competitions. In 2016 alone, she won the overall World Cup in lead and combined, the World Championship in Lead, as well as the Youth World Championship in Lead and Bouldering.

Since then, Janja has gone on to dominate the female competition scene in every discipline, with the exception of speed climbing. In the five lead seasons between 2016-2021, she was the overall season winner in 4. She has won the combined title every year since her senior debut and has been the overall boulder world Cup winner once. 2019 was perhaps Janja’s most impressive season to date, taking a clean sweep at every Bouldering World Cup, winning all 6 bouldering events and topping 74 of the total 78 problems.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics

Janja was a favorite to win the Olympics from the very beginning. She accomplished what any climber would dream of. Along with Miho Nonaka and Akiyo Noguchi, Janja made history as the first climber to win gold in the inaugural climbing event in Tokyo.

This was not an easy feat for Janja having stated ‘This was the hardest competition of my life’. Janja worked hard for two years and her hard work paid off. But, like with most of the climbers in the 2020 Olympics, speed was her weakest discipline having placed 14th in the qualification round. But that didn’t deter her. She knew she could make up for it with bouldering and lead.

She was the only one to top out all 4 boulders on a flash attempt and was placed 4th in the lead. Overall, she took first place in the qualifications, giving her a boost of confidence coming into the finals.

In the finals, she came 5th in speed, putting her in the right mindset for the remaining two disciplines. It was a challenging bouldering round, topping out two out of three. When she asked her coach what she needed to do to win, he replied ‘just climb and have fun’. That’s exactly what Janja did, putting her at the top of the podium with a gold medal around her neck.

Notable Ascents

Garnbret is known for her achievements in the competition circuits and spends most of her time climbing on plastic. That said, she has also shown herself a capable outdoor climber, most of which is done during the winter break from competition climbing.  

Garnbret started bagging hard ascents in 2015, around the same time her competitive career was beginning to take off. A trip to Pandora, Croatia in March saw her onsight her first 8b Avatar, as well as her first 8c redpoint of Scrat. That same year she would also go on to claim her first 8c+, Miza za šest, in her home country of Slovenia. 

To date, Garnbrets hardest ascent came in Jan 2018 after she clipped the chains, of La Fabela pa la Enmienda a 9a line in Santa Linya, Spain. A week later, on the same trip, she claimed her second 9a with an ascent of Selecció Natural.

Her most unusual project came in the form of the Red Bull feature film ‘360 Ascent’, which Janja stated was the “coolest” climb that has attempted. This saw her fellow Solivan competition climber, Domen Škofic, climb Europe’s tallest chimney, on a route specially constructed for the duo. The route was, as the name suggests 360 meters, 13 pitches with a grade of 8B+ with the climbing progressively becoming more difficult higher up. This was a project Domen had spent 6 years trying to get approved and was also the first multi-pitch experience for Garnbret.

Off the back of her Olympic win in the summer of 2021, Garnbret has dedicated some more time to ascents of harder routes. In November 2021 she onsighted, not one, but two (Fish Eye and American Hustle) sport routes with a confirmed grade of 8c, making the first woman to onsight climb a route of this grade.

UPDATE: Paris 2024 Olympics

The GOAT has done it again! Janja recently became a two-time Olympic gold medalist in Paris. In true Janja fashion, she managed to top all first three boulders in the boulder round. The fourth, and most difficult boulder seemed to cause her some issues, not because it was insanely hard, but because it seemed like she had injured herself.

It later transpired that her finger got caught between two holds and was worried she might have broken or fractured it. Coming off the boulder round, Janja definitely seemed rather rattled by the situation. Coming into the lead round, Janja gave it her all, and while Ai Mori was the only climber to nearly top the lead wall, Janja only needed around 70 points to guarantee her 1st place.

She shared the podium with USA’s Brooke Raboutou (silver) and Austria’s Jessica Piltz (bronze).

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