Before a home crowd in Koper, Janja Garnbret claimed her 51st career World Cup victory, pushing her all-time record further out of reach. The win, her 33rd in Lead, came on a humid September evening that tested the Slovenian as much as any rival could.
Climbing last, climbing furthest
The women's Lead final followed a familiar script. The USA's Brooke Raboutou set the early target, reaching hold 33 to secure silver. Garnbret, the last athlete on the wall and knowing exactly what was needed, answered by topping the route at hold 42+.
It looked anything but comfortable. "I was fighting with the humidity," she told reporters afterwards. "I was sliding off every hold." A near-slip on an unchalked yellow pocket threatened to end the run, but she recovered and drove through the sticky upper section.
A decade of rewriting the record books
The Koper gold landed barely three weeks after her 50th win in Innsbruck, a milestone she met with a laugh: "Fifty is crazy!" Her first senior World Cup title came at Chamonix on 12 July 2016, and the ten years since have brought two Olympic golds, ten world championship titles, and a perfect bouldering clean sweep in 2019.
This season has stretched beyond competition walls. In June she made the first female ascent of Bibliographie, a 9b+ at Céüse, becoming only the second woman to climb the grade. The gap between her outdoor projects and podium habits grows smaller every year.
Raboutou's silver marked her first medal of 2026, while South Korea's Chaehyun Seo took bronze and kept her podium streak alive across all five World Climbing Series events this season. Still, the night belonged to the woman in orange, raising a fist to a crowd that has rarely seen her lose.
The 2026 Lead overall title remains open heading into the Santiago final in October, but in Koper, Garnbret reminded the field that her grip on the sport has not loosened.
