Garnbret dominates Women’s Boulder at World Championships
- Sunday 6th August 2023
Janja Garnbret, as widely anticipated, dominated the Women’s Boulder event to take the Gold on Day 5 at the World Championships in Bern.
After winning the Women’s Youth A World Championships in Arco in September 2015 Janja Garnbret spend 2016 consolidating herself in senior Lead World Cups before opening her Boulder campaign in 2017. Since winning her first IFSC World Cup Boulder Gold at Chongqing, China back in April 2017 Janja Garnbret has pretty much dominated the Women’s Boulder competition scene ever since. Her performance in the Women’s Boulder competition at the Bern World Championships was nothing if not classic Garnbret; summing it up in one word, you’d have to say she was simply dominant.
With absolutely no disrespect to the other phenomenal climbers in the Women’s event, Garnbret however was on a different level not only in terms of her strength, speed, agility, climbing skills and confidence but also in terms of her consistency. Garnbret’s march through the Women’s Boulder rounds was relentless; first in her qualification group with all five tops – three of which she flashed, top in the semi-finals with four flashed boulders and then top in the final with, yep, another four flashes. Flashing the last problem in the final she looked dazed and confused; IFSC commentator Matt Groom and Shauna Coxsey both picked up on it. Didn’t she believe it, was she confused? Seconds later, of course, the stadium erupted and then the emotions flooded in. Being objective, it was more like a coronation than a competition!
Brook Raboutou finished on top of her group in the qualification round whilst fellow Team USA members Anastasia Sanders, Natalia Grossman and Kyra Condie all finished close behind. Team France had three in the top ten as well, Zelia Avezou, Flavy Cohault and Oriane Bertone.
Brook Raboutou got closest to Janja Garnbret in the semis; like Garnbret she topped all four blocs too even flashing three of them. Oriane Bertone stepped up to finish the semis in third with three tops including two flashes. Natalia Grosman, Ai Mori and Zelia Avezou took the remaining places for the finals.
Having played second fiddle to Garnbret all competition, sadly Brooke Raboutou was forced down into third place and Bronze with two tops and four zones in the final. Oriane Bertone kept her cool and topped three blocs flashing one; enough for second place and Silver. Janja Garnbret, as already outlined, crushed it and took yet another World Championship Gold with a very convincing win. It was Garnbret’s seventh World Championship Gold, the most of any climber in any discipline of any gender.
Speaking after her win Garbret said: “It’s hard to put into words right now what I feel. To be honest I never get used to winning. I will probably never get used to stepping onto the podium and celebrating first place because it’s just so incredibly hard to keep the level up because the girls are so strong and coming after me, and it’s hard to keep up with them. Every win means the world to me, it’s always like the first one.”
Garnbret explained how the problems had felt saying: “The boulders were tricky, so it was easy to fall, but today I was ‘the right Janja’, as I like to call it, where I was in my own world and my own bubble. I didn’t hear or see anything because I was just in the present moment and just enjoying myself on the wall, so I didn’t doubt that I would fall once because I was just climbing and enjoying. The best moments were probably the slabs. Everyone knows I haven’t been the greatest on slabs this year because of the injury and everything going on, it was pretty tough for me training that, so every time I topped a slab I was incredibly happy.”
Watch the Women’s Bouldering below…