Interview with Alain Robert, the French Spider-Man

I am fascinated, intrigued and at the same time amazed by his performance, his thirst for accomplishment at the risk of his life.

Alain Robert spent part of his childhood in the south of France, surrounded by cliffs and the Vercors mountains, but Alain did not immediately have a taste for heights, he was even afraid of them. As a child, he had many nightmares in which he fell. Alain’s passion was born through his parents’ television screen, one Sunday afternoon. Alain was literally fascinated by an American film, “La neige en deuil”, inspired by a book by Henri Troyat. This film tells the story of how two French mountaineers, high mountain guides, go to climb Mont Blanc to rescue possible survivors of the Malabar Princess, which had just crashed at the summit.
At that moment, Alain, however terrified by the void, decided that he wanted to become a climber.

Alain started climbing at the age of 12, notably by joining the scouts, but his first inclination towards the vertiginous climbing of skyscrapers was born as a young teenager. On his way home from college, he realized that he had forgotten the keys to the apartment he occupied on the 7th floor of his residence with his parents. He then climbed the 7 floors, without any insurance, to reach his apartment under the astonished eyes of the concierge. The taste of the challenge was born in him, the desire to climb summits to, without knowing it, become famous. To climb higher and higher, but not in defiance of the danger.
Before tackling skyscrapers, Alain Robert first had an exceptional career as a cliff climber, one of the best climbers in the world.