Welcome to My World
2023 · 31 min · Competition · Janja Garnbret
Janja Garnbret is the most dominant competition climber who has ever lived: Olympic champion, serial World Cup winner, a competitor so far ahead of her era that finals sometimes feel like exhibitions. This half-hour film from her own channel opens the door on the life behind that dominance.
Shot through a season of training in Slovenia and competing on the World Cup circuit, it covers the machinery of elite competition climbing: the board sessions, the route-reading, the pressure of being the favorite every single time. Garnbret is candid about the weight of expectation in a way champions rarely are while still competing, and the film doubles as the best free look inside the competition world currently online.
Review
The best free look inside competition climbing currently online, and the reason is that the champion is candid while still competing. Janja Garnbret, Olympic champion and serial World Cup winner, opens the door on a season of training in Slovenia and competing on the circuit, and the film comes from her own channel.
This is for climbers who have never understood what the machinery of elite competition involves: board sessions, route reading, and the pressure of being the favorite every single time. It is also for non-climbers, because the wall is plastic but the story is about expectation. Skip it if you only care about rock. There is none here, and the film does not apologize for that.
What works is the honesty about weight. Garnbret talks about the burden of being expected to win in a way champions rarely do mid-career, and the film gives that more time than the medals. The training footage is specific enough to be useful. What it gets wrong is that a self-produced film about oneself has no outside voice, and thirty-one minutes could use one. Nobody in the film disagrees with her.
Rotpunkt, Patagonia's film about Alex Megos learning to fail, is the closest thing on the site: a prodigy dealing with what dominance costs. Megos's film has a route. Garnbret's has a scoreboard, and I think hers is the braver of the two because she made it herself.