Sport climbing’s golden girl and Olympic champ Janja Garnbret tells Singapore fans the secrets to her success

In the last two weeks of September, there had been a perceptible sense of excitement, a buzzing of sorts among a particular community. And no, it wasn’t because of the return of the F1 races to Singapore after COVID-19 slammed the brakes on life in general. It was the arrival of a certain Olympic champion on our shores.

For climbing fans who have been catching Janja Garnbret on the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Cup circuit via YouTube – and no doubt, marvelling at her prowess and dominance in these world-class competitions – seeing her in person was a unanimously “surreal” experience.

Looking every bit she does on screen – blonde ponytail, lithe but powerful limbs and those steely blue eyes peering from underneath a cap – the 23-year-old Slovenian climber walked into Boulder+ at The Chevrons with her coach Roman Krajnik, fresh from winning the season’s last lead climbing world cup in Jakarta and securing the women's overall lead climbing trophy for 2022.

This was an athlete who became eligible for IFSC leading climbing and bouldering competitions at age 16 in 2015 and as of September, had already garnered 37 world cup titles and 56 podium finishes.

A few months after becoming an Olympic champion, she became the first woman to onsight 8c – a grade and feat accomplished only by a few men in the world. Next on her list is the famous Spanish route, La Dura Dura, which has only been climbed by two others (climbing luminaries Adam Ondra and Chris Sharma, if you're wondering) so far.

But for all her accomplishments, the fan-dubbed GOAT (that’s Greatest Of All Time to the uninitiated) isn’t without her losses. Just this year, she missed out on two gold medals in Edinburgh, Scotland, and on home ground in