Janja Garnbret defended her gold medal in sports climbing on Saturday, becoming a double Olympic champion in the Boulder & Lead event.
Garnbret, 25, won the gold for her home country of Slovenia, her score topping Team USA’s now silver-medalist Brooke Raboutou and the other finalists. The two are close friends though, and after the competition was completed, they ran over to one another and embraced.
“We have an incredible friendship to where we both want each other to do our best, and that’s what happened today,” said Raboutou, according to the Washington Post. “And that feels really good to share that with somebody, and to represent the sport in a way that we know we’re doing it right and we’re doing it for ourselves.”
In the bouldering semi-finals, Garnbreat dazzled, just four-tenths of a point away from a perfect score, earning 99.6 points out of 100.
During the fourth boulder of the finals, though, after initially dominating, Garnbret fell and began to nurse one of her fingers, at which point Raboutou was able to overtake her slightly.
As the competition heated up, Garnbret managed to overtake Raboutou in the lead section of the finals, despite her potential injury. Her lead performance was enough to reach the coveted podium position with a combined score of 168.5 points.
“I was really scared because my finger got stuck in between two holes and I couldn’t get it out,” Garnbret said, per the Washington Post. “But I had so much adrenaline that… I didn’t even care. I said to myself, ‘I don’t care if I’m missing a hand or a finger.’ I would go out there and climb the route.”
Nine years after featuring in her first World Cup aged 16, Garnbret has officially cemented herself in climbing history with eight world championship titles, and in 2019, Garnbret achieved an extraordinary feat, sweeping the Bouldering World Cup season by winning all six events—the first ever to do it.
In adding her second Olympic gold medal, Garnbret has only further proved her title as the “undisputed G.O.A.T. in her discipline,” according to the official Olympics blog.
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