We'd like to acknowledge that traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was produced, the Galligel people of the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
It's March twenty twenty four and we're in Manila. The man best known as the French Spider Man has just climbed forty seven stories of the GT International Tower. It's one of the highest skyscrapers in the Philippines, and Alan Robert has scaled the seven hundred and twelve foot building without any safety equipment, just a bag of chalk and a pair of climbing shoes. He's done it before and
he'll do it again. With more than one hundred and fifty structures under his belt, including the Burj Khalifer, Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. In the climbing world, he's a rock star. More people watched his climb of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi than the opening ceremony of the Football World Cup Finals. He doesn't see this as a sport, but instead a life path. He prepares carefully before each ascent, calculating the risks and ensuring his
mind is totally focused. He must get it right. I'm Att Middleton and this is Headgame today, the notorious French spider Man undertaking some of the riskiest and most dangerous challenges in the world and loving every second of it. I am extremely excited right now to be speaking with the famous French spider Man, Monsieur Alain Robert.
Mons only like the Bali who the peer you know. I am live in Bali, which I've been leaving for eleven years.
It's a pleasure to meet you, it really is. I'm a huge, huge fan myself. I've been following your stuff since they dot since you know you you brought the world to attention hanging off of structures and buildings. But let's get into it first and foremost, Allah, when did you start climbing? Did you start climbing the moment you know you left your mother's womb? Did you start? Were you like a kid that climbed all the time?
Not exactly like that. Actually my story is more complicated. I born as a kid that was afraid of everything, that was shy. I was lacking of self confidence and I had a dream. I wanted to become courageous.
So it took me. It took me quite some.
Time, you know, because at some point I was just thinking, what is the meaning of a dream? Is it a thing that is just a dream and I forget about it? Or shall I try to realize my dream? And then I did choose to realize it. So later on I got inspired. I saw a movie. It's it's a story of the plane who crashed near the top of Mont Blanc.
Two brothers.
There are mountaineering climber climbers they are they are climbing a steep mountain. And then I've been I've been amazed by that, and I got really inspired by that.
Can you remember your first climb? That the first time that you thought, do you know what, I'm actually quite good at this and I enjoy it.
Well.
Actually that that was even purely by accident, you know.
I was at school.
There was a too meeching teacher in a row, and then I went home. I realized that I didn't have my key. Back in the days, I was living on the seventh floor. And then, uh, looks the building was going to be easy, which it was, but I climbed the seventh story building.
Oh wow, So that's where it all started. Nothing to do with climbing, just you didn't want to be left outside.
Yeah, more more like by obligation. I did it. Yeah, but that was kind of simple.
It's like going from one hand rails to the next, so nothing to do like climbing.
You know.
Did you climb that and think, oh I enjoyed that. I wasn't really scared And did you get a bit of a buz from it?
Well, definitely, But more like back in the days we were talking about more than fifty years ago, I had no real option. I was living in France, in the middle of nowhere.
Climbing was not existing.
I couldn't join the Alpine Club because I was too too young.
So I did start.
By joining becoming a boy scout, and there I met someone that also wanted to climb. So otherwise maybe if I had never met that guy.
I was never going to climb. Ever, I'm not sure.
You know, sometimes life is taking some you know direction, which at the beginning it looks a bit funny.
Yes, so that yeah, that's that sliding door moment, isn't it. So talk me through your first time that you sort of realized that this is what you wanted to do. You wanted to climb. You that's you know, you were passionate about it, you had a message behind it. When was the first time that you thought, do you know what, I'm really going to make this career?
I pretty much knew it right away, Like maybe when I was twelve or thirteen, I didn't know that one day I would be able to make a living from sponsors. So I was just thinking more like becoming mountaineering guide. You know that kind of people who are making a living, they get clients to climb Mont Blanc or that kind of stuff.
So more more more like that.
And uh and of course when I started to become famous, then I've also realized that I could make a very good living by just climbing. So instead of teaching, that was really climbing for myself.
That's quite quite a segue. So when did you first do your first solo climb?
Oh? You know, when I was this boy scout.
I was with a friend, Pierre actually his name, and sometimes we were climbing. We were free flowing, you know, easy stuff, but you know, uh, one next to each other and you know, just doing understand like that.
Yes, from a young young age, you're always always climbing. I was quite similar. You know, when I was young, I was climbing around everywhere, climbing buildings, and you know I was I went on to do mountaineering, so it's a bit different than the military. So it's a bit different to your direction. But take me back to that first moment you caught the eyes of the world.
The attention of the world was in ninety four and I climbing in Chicago the Accentia Tower. But actually before it, my real legacy is on rocks. What I did on rocks is far more impressive than what I did in Berlin.
Took me through that. Alan took me through that.
People are not really aware because it was before the internet. Back in the days that was like only a few TV stations, so not much access to the medias.
Even Climbing Magazine.
They wanted not to publish me because they just thought that what this guy is doing is too dangerous. We don't want to show a bad example to our readers, so we're only going to post like a small pictures, like really something very short. Things has completely shifted when Alex o'nald climbed the r Capitan. Yes, suddenly people have started to realize that it was possible to do a
very hard stuff on rocks, which Alexi said it. He gave an interview for one of my documentary film in twenty twenty and he explained that actually.
I am the dude, I am the og.
I am the guy who was free following five firt India when he was still a baby. You know, it was in nineteen ninety one. But the problem is that, of course he knew about this part of my life because we met in a film festival in Poland, so we knew all about it. I got, I got a bigger water back in the days and everything. But the thing is most people they didn't really know. Only a very small small niche of people were fully aware about it. And this is not the way you are making a living.
This is also not a way that people are ready knowing you.
So it is more.
Actually, when I shifted onto buildings, and that was the right time because what I was doing on rocks was so on the edge, so on the cutting edge that I couldn't go any further. I was climbing some days. I was at fifty to fifty. I was actually the first person in the world free following five Indee even Alex. He said, he still didn't climb a third Indee free solo.
Wow.
So that's why we're having this conversation and.
We are talking about thirty three years back.
Yeah, exactly, nineteen ninety one, nineteen ninety that ever you were free climbing, and like you said, you know, free climbing. There was no internet back then. There was no exposure.
You know, it is a very very tiny small community that went out what climbing, and you know, there wasn't really a known sport, so there was there was no way of no one even realizing what you were capable of or you know, the outstanding climbs that you were doing and how dangerous they were, because there was no exposure to it exactly.
And what was frustrating for me is when finally I got access to the mainstream medias when I started climbing buildings, I was explaining to the journalist that what I did on rocks was insane, and they said, no, on rocks, you know, there is a there is a bucket, there is other guys who did it, but on buildings only one and it's smooth, And.
So I said it.
I don't know how many times for like maybe a year or two, and then one day I even forgot myself that that was my background and that was my legacy. It it resurve faces in twenty seventeen when Alex climbed the El Capitan.
Otherwise I have I have simply forgotten.
It's been submerged by the structures that you've climbed. But free climbing, free soloing on rocks is extremely difficult if you get that wrong. You know, on buildings you can get quite I suppose quite a good handhold, quite a good hold. But on rocks sometimes people that realize the difficulties of being on your fingers, you know.
Being oh exactly, this is what people don't realize.
You know, Climbing on rocks is far more random.
There is a there is there may be good pockets, and there may be you know, like only a single finger hole even on one cm pocket. Then suddenly you're having a Dino. So you know, by comparison, it's insane. As on buildings you can easily understand right away. You know, it takes like sometimes one minute and you know, okay, I can easily climb that building.
So why did you transition from free climbing to buildings. Where did that come about? How did you make that decision?
Because I knew that I was going too far away on rocks, I nearly fell. I don't know how many times I was climbing, you know, some of the routes that I climbed back in the days, I was at fifty to fifty, So it means that I was never sure that I would be finishing the day. And then, you know, when I got this proposal to climb and buildings, I at first I was perplexed because nobody has ever
done that before. For these guys are not at least they were paying me an ice trip in the US, going to New York, Chicago, Dallas and Houston.
So just thought, well, at the very worst.
At least I am having ten days a holiday, and at the very best, maybe maybe maybe there is still something that I could do. And then once I was in town, then I realized that wow, there is stuff, There is actually a real potential, and I was made.
I was overly excited. But you know the problem is these people they wanted to make it officially, you know, approved, but it took them two months before they came back to me and they said we tried very hard, you know, and all of the buildings that you have spotted, and you told us that you could climb it, we cannot get a new approval. Then we said, we spoke with some lawyers. It seems that it's not a big crime.
And at the very worst you could learn in jail, maybe like up to two weeks, but nothing really serious.
And then and then I.
Decided, okay, let's go for it.
Wow, so you took the opportunity. You thought, do you know what, I can travel around the US, I can do some cool stuff. Were you excited when they told you that you could climb? And maybe maybe you know you have got no permits to climb, but climb anyway, because if you do, the worst that can happen is that you spend a couple of days in prison. Did that Did that excite you?
Yeah?
Yeah? Well, at the same times, it scires me a lot because I was afraid that maybe you know, some I don't know, some secuity guys or cups, they may try to shoot me. So, you know, I had kind of a funny thought on my mind, you know, like not being sure that somehow I was very frailed. I really wanted to do it. It looks like completely insane.
You know.
You get to understand that I had been as far as I could go on rocks, So for me, it was the perfect transition. It was perfect. Suddenly, you know, I was discovering something new. I was discovering, Uh, traveling the whole world, meeting people, becoming famous, which is not bad, uh going to prison. You know, it was just like it was suddenly offering me, you know, a full spectrum of everything. And and to be honest with you, I really loved it. Now now I started, you know, to
get you know, I came back on rocks. I am no longer performance climber, so I am more like outsider. Before I was at my I was at my top, so I wanted to push the envelope a bit further all the time. But now I have no more ambition, only climbing back on rock free solo. And for me, it's already insane.
You had a big accident back in nineteen eighty two, was it?
I fell from twenty meters head first and at the bottom of the cliff. It was a limestone slab, so meaning both hands they exploded. You can see the shape on my hand Wow, that was from the accident. I have inherited of a sixty six percent disability mainly located on my fingers, on my wrist, on my forearms, on my elbows.
You achieved everything after with those injuries.
Oh yeah, yeah, meaning what is insane?
It's nine years later I was the first person in the world free following a five thirty in year.
That is phenomenal, that is, and that's all in free solo climbing. See that's what I mean. You had such a credible and such an honorable and such a successful free climbing career which then has completely disappeared really because of your building climate.
Completely overshadowed all I have done that was insane. And of course when I started to move back onto social media, then I have understood that I was going to use it because I had still plenty of all the footages, and then I have started, you know, step by step, and now pretty much everyone knows that what I did on rocks, especially because Alex Honold he gave a like ten minutes interview and he's explaining a lot of things.
He's explaining, uh that I was in advance uh from my time, like what what I was doing so he's explaining all of that, and that has helped me a lot. You know, now, a lot of people that are like, wow, you are you are the you are the the the eu og you are you know, you are the number one.
You are this are that?
So I don't care because there is no competition in between me a lex or Or. There was like only a couple of guys who climb very difficult routes in the whole world. It's like, yeah, we are, we are, we are like five or six.
That's amazing, That's absolutely amazing. So climbing there's always been part of your in your DNA has always been part of you. And when you went over to climb structures, it was more the opportunity, the excitement. Now talk me through the first building that you climbed.
That that wasn't that was insane.
Because uh I you know, I remember because on that day the film director, he knew that I was going to do something illegal, so they put me in a nice five star hotel, maybe thinking that it could be his last night something like that kind of last yeah, he's last dinner. Yeah then, and and I remember because I kept on thinking, you know about the potential consequences, but also whether I would be capable to climb that
building or not, because I had zero idea. You know, back in the days, this guy, the film director said, you cannot go to the building, you cannot touch it, you cannot try it, so meaning it's just like, Okay, I saw it, that's all I know. So and also telling me, oh, in Chicago, you need to be very fast on the first sixty meters because they are using this a very tall ladder the firefighter. So it's just like so on my mind, I was thinking, I have
never climbed the fucking building in my life. I didn't even check that building, and I need to get sure that within a three or four minutes, I have already climbed the sixteen meters. And then I was thinking, on the top of it, there will be cops, they may try to shoot me. Or then the next day that we plan, Okay, you go to the building at eight am and everything. But he called me in the morning and he said, we're having a bad news. There is a marathon all around the building and this area it's
completely locked, is full of cops and everything. So I had to wait until two pm. So then the more I was waiting, the more I was getting anxious and nervous. Finally, at clock he called me. He said, it's fine, a line, be ready, you know, cops now they are gone and everything.
Thirty minutes later, what's happened? It started to rain again again. Again.
He called me and he said, alah, you know, we are really sorry.
You need you need to postpone this sand because now it's rains.
So I waited again like one hour, and then you called me back and he said, well, now it's sunny again.
We went to the building.
It's completely dry and line, you know, be ready, prepare, you're climbing shoes, take a taxi and ask your friend Alexis with the photographer to drop you. And then uh, finally I was. I was at it and uh, and right away I found it insane, except that I was really really tired because the way I managed to climb
the first six meters was was really was completely wrong. Actually, now if I climb a building, I just need to be fast for the first two meters and not even if there is nobody here, I don't even need to rush.
Wow.
But I had so much on my mind that I nearly had to run on the building for sixty meters. That finally, by the time I have climbed the sixty meters, I was completely exhausted.
I was diidrated because.
Those were windows, mirror and with the sun and reflection that I was really really, really dead.
Wow, So you had the This must have been absolutely crazy, because I can imagine once you get going, it's you've got no preparation, just visuals. You can't look at the building, you can't figure it out. You literally have to get on there and go sixty meters. So you hit sixty meters and and what you what's going through your heads? What do you think at this stage? You think, well, I can slow down a bit now or did you just go just keep going, just keep going no more more?
Like I was into the I was into into that race with the time and I don't even know. It's like you are no longer thinking on your own you you are you are thinking, uh, based on what this film director.
You know.
The The problem is, once you have taken a certain pace, it's difficult to change it. It's not so simple suddenly, you know, like slowing down, reducing your speed. It doesn't happen like that. It is happening for sure, because actually your your your your physical stamina is decreasing. Then at the same time your speed is also decreasing. But otherwise
it's like you are too much. It's like a little bit like if before it I have been kind of brainwashed and I had been computerized to climb this building that fast.
Do you have any distractions was you're climbing. Did you know were the police around? Could you hear sirens? Could you was there any distractions where you thought to yourself, Oh, no, just I've got to I've got to ignore these and just concentrate on the climb and get to the top. You know, that might that might.
Cause me to fool No, because I actually that that was different. You know, Let's say that I was really focused on my targets or priority, this is to stay alive, and then I was more on survival instinct mode. So yes, I could hear sirens, I could I could hear cops. I could hear some people screaming at the bottom, so some people, you know, gathering at the bottom of the buildings. But I didn't I didn't really care. I meaning that
was not important. It's more like, you know, when you go to the supermarket, than is music as a background, and then you go to the supermarket not for listening music, but to buy some food.
May I was climbing that building.
My mission was to climb the building, was not about listening and watching what was happening around me. So I was really concentrated on my target.
Yeah, you're super super focused. I suppose you can't afford not to be focused when you're climbing something like that, because only one mistake, and you.
This is you know, every day I am having this question one hundred times, and every day I am replying because people they don't understand. They are thinking that I don't feel fear, and I'm explaining I am the same as any other human being. I do feel fear. But the difference I am mastering my fear. When I am doing something which my life is at stake, I can put my fear.
Aside because I can't.
I can't afford to be distracted by thinking that I may fall and I may die.
You know. All the more, when I.
Was restollowing those Third India on rocks, I was so on the edge then I was absolute clear, no space for any single fear because I was dealing with some movements so precise, so interasing clear difficult. Then nothing was interfering. Yes, LA focused on that exactly, exactly, laser focused.
Yeah, and I understand that in the military when I used to, you know, do what I do, had to be laser focused on the job at hand because if not one mistake, one error, and you know, you'd be gone. So you have to stay laser focused in those moments because it's a matter of life or death if you've got to get it right. Going back to the climb in Chicago, you get to the top, you get arrested. Do you get a buzz after that? Do you think to yourself, right, this is what I want to do now,
I just want to go around the world. If the people are sponsoring me, if people are paying for me to do this, I get a buzz off of it. This is what I want to do. This is what I'm going to do.
I was still not at it.
Actually, I have only joined the team Sector No Limits.
You know, it's a team of the athletes.
Like some they are they are they are swimming, so Scooba, diving, well, all that kind of stuff. And they were making a documentary film on all of the athletes. So for me, it was free swallowing. But except that the film director he came with the idea that actually, this guy he could climb some some rocks in Utah, some sandstone looks
like a bit like like like a building. And suddenly, uh, along the way, he's falling asleep, and suddenly in his image on those rock towers, he's shifting onto a building.
So that that was the old That was the old idea.
So so you're you're seeing me climbing something like a Mozzy's Tower in Utah.
So it's like it.
Looks like nearly like like a World Red Center, and then suddenly we are shifting on something very similar, except that you are in the in the city, you can drink whenever, and you're not like in the middle of the desert.
And you know, and when when did you first realize that you you had captured the world's attention, that you were a global celebrity, that people loved watching you climb, people supported your climbing, and you were you were shifted into the limelight and into fame. When did you realize that moment happened in.
Ninety four because for doing this, for doing this film, I had to climb four different buildings, so we did within a short period of time, well not that short, but like maybe half here, I climbed those four buildings, and then I realized that actually I started to get demons for interviews every day from all over the world and everything. So then I realized, and then I started to get demands from people willing to sponsor me, to pay me. So, you know, suddenly I was in a
complete different world when I was free. Following five third indeed, I could get a very small, tiny little sponsor paying me not much, giving me a yeah, free climbing shoes and all that stuff. And suddenly for me, it's just like I could make a fortune and still climbing, meaning still doing something that I loved doing.
So that was like kind of insane.
And to be honest with you, I have known celebrity in some places in the world that you can't even imagine, you know. I remember in ninety six when I went to Rio Degenero. I had been previously three times on Fantastico Fantastical pretty much any single Brasilian watching it on So when I arrived at the airport in.
Rio, everybody was knowing me. I was passing back.
There was buses with a full of kids ambrenare.
I didn't know.
It's just like suddenly over night, you know, I climb in Abuddha Bie in Dubai with more than hundred a thousands people looking at me climbing. It's like it's like a meat Jagger concert. At the bottom, they're like watching at you.
That's amazing, man, How did that make you feel?
Well?
It's the same, you know, at the same time when I'm climbing, all the more if it's difficult. If it's
not difficult, I can make a show a bit. Now I have started to understand that when when the crowd is shouting, you know, I can hear that they are cheering me up because you know, all all the stuff I did for sample in the UAE or in Katar, I did it officially, So it means that that's why they're allowing more than hundred thousand people to come on the spot, because it is regimented by like five hundred cups. So I got also this kind of stuff in China.
In China having like seven hundred the militaries taking care of me with a lot of cops and being sure that they could manage all of the people. So those are things that I have been living in Kazakhstan. I have been living in Katar and many times in Dubai, many times in a budha b in Brazil, in Caracas, you know, in many countries, even in Moscow. In Moscow, because that was during the Moscow Anniversary in twenty eleven, they were doing the biggest video mapping and a burning.
I was climbing the Moscow University at night. There was a twenty three minute films that cost fifteen million. There was Vladimir Putin that was medve F and there was eight hundred thousand people.
Wow, that is phenomenal.
Seeing a crowd that huge.
I am still having pictures sometimes I am posting it because it's just like I still need to scratch my head. Yeah, pinch yourself now nowadays, Yeah, my career is more like backwards. But however, I am still climbing. I am on the project of a big film, a bit like the one like a free solo, you know, something really with money and you know, and also you know the new generation of material because you know, now when I'm watching all
the difficult buildings, I did twenty five years ago. The way the way they get film was ship because the cameras were bad. The angles were wrong because they were at the bottom. As the good angle they are from above. So it has to be drawn or it has to be good.
Yeah, the angles, the long lenses, everything exactly.
So you know, it's like even in this department, the level I shifted, like, you know, it looks like what I was doing thirty years ago looks like well, like Charlie chapin a movie. And what you are doing now, it's a mission impossible.
It's completely different.
Yeah.
And and what I love about you and what you've done for this community and what you've done for globally is you've broken the mold when it's come when it comes to climbing buildings, because at first it was highly illegal. It had to be a secret operation. You know, you had to go down at the bottom, said at first, wait for the rain, wait for the security to go, then climb. And you broke that mold where it became accessible.
People were granting you and you only permission to climb this building, you know, an audience and an escort, a police escort. You completely shattered the mold. When it came to something being highly illegal, to something being celebrated and put on the map and almost breaking down rules and regulations because of what you achieved. How did that? How does that make you feel? Now that you can you can go wherever you want basically and go I want
to climb that structure. Anyone else they'll be like, no, mister Allah, go ahead, you climb it. That's phenomenal, that's really good.
It's interesting.
You know that I am in the English school books for the primary school.
There is my story all over the world. People they are.
Learning because sometimes says, there is a lot of haters and social medias and they are wishing me deaf. They are you know, I got it again this morning. So I am blocking people, but it's annoying. But sometimes I'm responding. I am saying, well, you know that maybe because most likely, if you're having kids, they are learning my story at school because I am in their school books.
And whether you whether you like it or not.
I'm there. Maybe you like you or not, your children are going to be reading about it.
I am not such a bad example. I've been invited to the Elize Palace. I have been invited by the King and the Queen and Malaysia, the Sheek Mahammad in Dubai and plenty of people. I gave talks in Oxford, I gave talks in Cambridge. I am having a statue in China. I am featured in the book among the Andred Greaterst Sport People from Old Time.
I wrote many books.
You know, yeah, but you push. You are the epitome of pushing human capability and performance. You know, what is there not to celebrate about that? It is? You know, you talk about emotional intelligence, psychological resilience, physical robustness, capability. Why wouldn't you push that out? Why there's such a positive message in what you do? And listen to the haters of the haters unfortunately that's a generational thing that you get on social media.
Ignore them.
But when it comes to human capability and performance, you are showing the world that we are a phenomenal, phenomenal species and that if you put your mind to things and you focus on things, you can achieve the impossible, which is absolutely phenomenal. And what I love about you as well is that you recently climbed with your son.
Yeah, yeah, we did it like pretty much two years back and that now this coming October.
He wants to do another one with me.
And what did you climb with him?
Ah, there was an easy belding in a Barcelona We climbed glorious tower. But you know, he has never climbed before and more than forty four meters. But the problem is that he didn't know how to manage his muscles so othough he's built like Bruce Lee or small translegger, he was completely wasted. I was telling him because we were close to each other, and I was telling him, Look, Julian, actually me, I am using maybe five percent of my physical capacity and you you are using ninety five percent.
It took him, It took him ten days to recover. Ten days.
And he's a guy.
He used to be a parashutist. He's good in any kind of sports. But the thing is, you know, when you are confronted with more than one of the meters and you have never climbed before.
Then I guess the way you are.
You are you are grabbing your hords, you are pulling far too.
Much, you are exhausting yourself exactly, you're using your legs correctly, exactly.
You're so afraid that you may for then then you want to be absolutely sure. So you're you're you are giving like maybe one orndd kg, which at the end of the day maybe two kg is enough.
But of course, and again you know, there's nothing like he's obviously got the best, the best teacher, the best mentor because when it comes to experience like that, it is it's about knowing your body. It's about knowing how to control your emotions and to use them to your advantage. Like you said, putting yourself up, that's going to exhaust you.
If you keep doing that, you've got to just you know, know what you're doing, use all your bodies, you know, try and try and conserve the energty to get up to the top. And I've absolutely loved chatting with you. It's been absolutely phenomenal. You are, like I said, the epitome of human capability and performance. And what is next for you? What's happening now?
Next for me? You know?
Now I am redoing my visa, so it's gonna take like another two months. It's going to be a permanent resident visa in Indonesia. Then I will be honest traveling in October. There would be the release of my new book. I'll be climbing as well in Europe. I'll be climbing on rocks in Verdon and also we start working on a big film.
Wow, I can't wait. It's been absolutely phenomenal talking to you, my man. I love your energy. You're one of these rare people that I can feel your energy through the screen. You know, it's great, mate. Thank you so much for coming on head Game and listen. I look forward to reading your new book and look forward especially to the new film that's coming out.
Thank you mate, Thanks a lot. That was a great pleasure.
Thank you so much for joining me on Headgame. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our incredible stories and leave me a review wherever you're listening. I'm Matt Middleton. Catch you again next time.