Janja Garnbret

Janja Garnbret is a Slovenian professional rock climber and sport climber who has not only won multiple lead climbing and bouldering events, but has also garnered a reputation as the greatest competition climber of all time. Garnbret won her first international title in the lead competition of the 2014 World Youth B Championships. She is a top-ranked athlete in the lead climbing discipline and has won multiple gold medals in Boulder World Cup events. In 2021, she became the first-ever female Olympic gold medalist in climbing.

At age seven, Garnbret enrolled in a climbing course, where she was introduced to the techniques of climbing as a sport, and by the age of eight, she was competing in national competitions. By the end of elementary school, Garnbret had made the Slovenian Youth Climbing Team and she crowned her first season in national colors with the title of European Junior Champion in 2013. She went on to win her first major competition at the 2013 European Youth Championships in bouldering. Her success continued with appearances in various IFSC World Cups and Championships, and participation in Olympic Qualifier Series.

By the end of high school, Garnbret had already packed nearly two dozen world-class awards into her trophy cabinet. This includes a record-setting 27 matches won in the lead climbing World Cup with only four podium misses, and 16 victories in bouldering World Cup events, making for a total of 43 victories at the World Cup level. In 2014, 2015 and 2016 she won gold at the World Junior Championships and progressed from there to winning most of the IFSC competitions in which she participated in 2016. Garnbret won the World Cup in Lead and Combined disciplines, the World Championships in Lead, and the World Youth Championships in Lead and Bouldering in 2016.

The following year, 2017, saw Garnbret win the World Cup in Lead and Combined; the Combined title in the European Championships. She also finished second in Bouldering in both the World Cup and the European Championships. She continued her winning streak in 2018 and in early 2019 by achieving gold in all three events - lead, bouldering, and combined - at the European Championships. Her achievements led to her being named Slovenia's Sportswoman of the year in 2018 and 2019.

In the first half of 2019, Garnbret made history by becoming the first climber ever to win all the competitions of a season. In addition, her six consecutive boulder-climbing victories crowned her the overall winner of the Bouldering World Cup. She also became the World Champion in Bouldering at the Tokyo World Championships.

Aside from her competitive accomplishments, Garnbret is also notable for her achievements outside the competition scene. She is the world's first-ever female climber to onsight an 8c (5.14b) graded sport climbing route. Beyond competitions, Garnbret aims to conquer the peaks of as many of the world's toughest rock formations as possible.