PARIS (AP) — Janja Garnbret heard the young girls talking about how they could climb faster if they dropped weight, and the sport climbing star decided to speak up.
The eight-time world champion and defending Olympic gold medalist went on Instagram last year to raise awareness of the problems of eating disorders in sport climbing: “Do we want to raise the next generation of skeletons? Let’s not look away.”
“I decided to speak about it because this is like a taboo in the climbing world,” she told The Associated Press ahead of the Paris Olympics. “Everybody knew about it, and everybody was talking behind each other’s back. So everybody was talking, but nobody said it out loud.”
Eating disorders have long been a part of sport climbing, which made its Olympic debut in Tokyo and where lighter athletes typically have an advantage while trying to go higher and faster on the climbing routes.
But the athletes are going to be monitored more closely in Paris — the first Olympics with a screening process for climbing competitors that looks for signs of eating disorders and similar health issues.
“A first step seems to have been taken but further ones need to follow,” said the 25-year-old Garnbret, who will start competing in Paris this week. “It is good that screenings and supervision of athlete’s health seems to be taken more seriously, but it all will first prove relevant when someone who doesn’t fulfill the health criteria is actually not allowed to compete. I believe that only if this happens all previous steps and measures make sense and we will see a change. Not instantly obviously, but over time for sure.”
Garnbret said some athletes “shouldn’t be allowed to compete because they look like a skeleton, look just too skinny.”
The International Federation of Sport Climbing said it took action to protect athletes against the health consequences associated with low energy and “Relative Energy Deficiency in sport (REDs),” a syndrome recognized by the International Olympic Committee.
Testing and Screening
Based on an updated IOC statement on REDs, the climbing federation said it brought scientific experts together to come up with its screening process for certifying athletes for competition. Athletes have to fill out questionnaires about their health parameters — including weight, heart rate and blood pressure — and the national federations have to issue them a health certificate or request more testing before clearing them to compete.
The international federation also began conducting random and focused testing of body mass index, heart rate and blood pressure during the climbing season. An external commission was created to review suspected cases by comparing the data collected from athletes with the information provided by the national federations.
Critics say too much control of the screening process was given to the national federations, which generally will want as many of their athletes to be competing and achieving good results.
Garnbret, who is among the favorites for the gold medal in Paris, isn’t the only climbing athlete shining a light on eating disorders.
Melina Costanza, a member of the U.S. team for the Paris Games, detailed her personal struggle on Instagram in 2022, saying she thought the only way to achieve her goals was “through sacrifice, which meant pushing myself to mental, physical, and emotional places I knew were unsustainable.”
“This notion manifested as overtraining and an eating disorder that I explicitly denied or justified to both loved ones and myself,” she said. “Ultimately, the full-throttle lifestyle of overworking and undernourishment was yielding results, and it’s easy to ignore the cliff you’re running toward when you feel invincible.”
She said her performance started to “suffer from the energy deficit,” and everything from her sleep cycle to her concentration in school also was affected.
“I allowed myself to believe that excellence required starvation and ignored the warning signs from my mind and body,” she said. “The pain and hunger I endured felt like badges of honor.”
Getting Thinner Concerns
Costanza’s “moment of reckoning” came when she broke a foot because of what was believed to be compromised bone density, forcing her to undergo surgery.
World champion Petra Klingler, a veteran Swiss climber who didn’t qualify for the Paris Games, acknowledged she started thinking about ways to drop weight after seeing athlete after athlete improve by getting skinnier.
“I had these thoughts,” Klingler told the AP. “I think I just had an amazing coach who always gave me the confirmation that I can do it my way, I’m good as I am, and that we managed to get strong without going that path. But yeah, I definitely had these thoughts, if the only way to go is just not eating. … What if I went that way? Would I have been more successful?”
Klingler said the “super important topic” had to be addressed.
“Over all these years I’ve been competing, I’ve seen many, many, many athletes having trouble with eating,” the 32-year-old Klingler said. “Honestly, even I would say at some point or some period of my time I had an eating disorder. Not that you could see it, but it was like challenging my life and taking in so much energy of my whole day. It wasn’t healthy.”
Not just super thin athletes
Klingler said it affected her to see athletes who had been having performance issues suddenly doing “super well, getting all the attention and getting sponsors.”
She said the issue of eating disorders goes beyond super thin athletes who are having obvious problems. It also involves “the whole mental challenge about it.” She said it was tough having to stand on a scale before a competition and realize that maybe she was a lot heavier than the athlete just before her.
“It made it even harder just knowing. I had the feeling I’m too heavy, even though actually I was the healthy one,” she said.
Garnbret called for more discussion about eating disorders at the youth level of the sport, saying change was needed to help the next generation.
“Everybody can change the culture of eating disorders in sports,” she said. “We just need to address it correctly and talk about it in a good, positive way, like how we talk about food, that food is fuel, how we talk about body image. So if we talk about all these positive things, I think we can change the culture.”
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