Exclusive - Olympic champion Janja Garnbret speaks out on eating disorders in sport climbing: 'Being light does not mean being strong'

Olympic and eight-time world champion Janja Garnbret knows what it takes to reach the top in sport climbing. And losing weight is not it.

Having watched her friends and fellow competitors struggle with eating disorders as a way to get lighter and faster, Garnbret is now speaking out about the issues that have long been a taboo topic in her sport.

"I decided to do it because it breaks my heart when I hear eight- or nine-year-old girls or boys talking that if they lost a few kilos or if they were skinnier than the other person is, they would climb better," Garnbret told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview.

"This is something that it really does break my heart, so that's why I decided to raise my voice there and tell my opinion because people are risking their lives for a very small part of their life called career and after that they can have serious health consequences. And this is not what we want."

Olympics.com spoke to the Slovenian sport climbing legend to find out more about her experiences with eating disorders, why she decided to break the silence and how her message was received within the sports community.

• Paris 2024 - What is the new sport climbing format?
• Sport climbing star Janja Garnbret on being more resilient after career's first injury: "I learned a lot from it"

Lifting the veil on eating disorders in sport climbing

In a sport where athletes hang by boulders at impossible inclines and scale 15-metre walls in less than five seconds, every kilo matters.

Or so it seems, at least, to sport climbers who are looking for quick gains.

Less labour intensive or time consuming than training, cutting down on meals is often hailed as the ultimate shortcut to get faster on a climbing wall. Entering a gym with rail-thin climbers, where a starved frame leads to compliments rather than concern, endorses that attitude.

It is an environment that Garnbret, who got started in the sport at age seven, knows all too well.

Five days before the start of the 2023 IFSC Sport Climbing World Championships – with all eyes on the then six-time world champion – Garnbret made an Instagram post that sent ripples across the sports community.

A black and white photograph of the Olympic champion, it featured this raw caption: “Do we want to raise the next generation of skeletons? Let’s not look away.”

In the text that accompanied the post, Garnbret detailed the problem of eating disorders in sport climbing and called for more awareness and action.

"This was a very, very sensitive topic, so it was very important to choose the right words," she told Olympics.com. "I didn't want to call out any names or [be] offensive. I just wanted to share my thoughts on it, so not being disrespectful in any way.

"I also have friends who were in this kind of position and I saw what was happening to them, and I just don't want any other person to go through something like that."

Eating disorders are common among elite as well as amateur sport climbers, and more and more of them are now starting to share their stories.

One athlete recalled the pride he mistakenly felt when his extreme weight loss earned him the monicker "Auschwitz Boy", while other climbers have opened up about their self-destructive patterns of starving, bingeing and then punishing themselves with excessive exercise.

"It starts off with how we talk about food. We have to talk about food as fuel and not a bad thing," Garnbret said. "We cannot close our eyes that climbing is a sport related to weight, so we have to fight gravity. And of course you want to be light, but not too light, and there's a thin line between being too light.

"We as a society, first, we need to openly talk about it. We need to talk about how we define what fit means, does it mean this or that. And we have to openly talk about it. Also coaches have to be really educated on that because you have coaches that are actually saying to their athletes that they need to be skinnier, but this is not sustainable and this is not the way to go. So first, we need to create a healthy environment that you can thrive in and that's the most important thing."

Janja Garnbret: 'I don't want to be remembered just for my results'

Since its publication on 27 July, Garnbret's post has received more than 50,000 likes and almost 600 comments with fellow sport climbers praising the Slovenian athlete for speaking out about a topic long kept in the shadows.

"We all knew that eating disorders are a problem in our sport. It was a taboo topic that everybody knew about it [and] everybody was talking about it, but not loudly," Garnbret said. "Now more and more people are talking about it. And I got so much positive feedback from all the people, from my friends, from the climbing community, from everybody."

Garnbret said she was inspired to speak after hearing other athletes open up about their mental health struggles. The stories of USA's artistic gymnast Simone Biles and alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin resonated especially with the 24-year-old sport climber.

Now a sports role model herself, Garnbret wanted to use her public image to bring positive change.

"Right now I'm in a position of being a role model. I remember when I was younger and I had my role models and I was looking up to them and they were my inspiration and I wanted to be like them. So now I'm in this position and I want to be an inspiration for the kids," she said.

"I don't want to be remembered just for my results, like first places and wins. I want to be remembered for what kind of person I was and what kind of messages did I share. So this is the kind of message about eating disorders I wanted to share and I hope that young girls and boys will listen and learn something from it. It's important to me."