"See ya up there," Alex Honnold said after hugging his wife and walking to the corner of the building. Then he got started
Corey Rich for Netflix
Alex Honnold on Netflix's Skyscraper LiveNEED TO KNOW
- Alex Honnold began scaling the approximately 1,700-foot Taipei 101 on Sunday, Jan. 25, in Taiwan, or Saturday, Jan. 24, in America)
- The feat was being streamed on Netflix's Skyscraper Live
- “I’m sure I’ll feel a little nervous at the bottom, just because it’s something totally new and I don’t know how it’s going to feel,” Honnold, 40, told Netflix’s Tudum ahead of the climb
Alex Honnold's historic — and pulse-pounding — attempt to climb the Taipei 101 skyscraper on live TV has begun.
The famed free solo climber and father of two daughters, whom he shares with wife Sanni McCandless, began scaling the approximately 1,700-foot building on Sunday, Jan. 25, in Taiwan (or Saturday, Jan. 24, in America), with the feat being streamed on Netflix's Skyscraper Live.
"See ya up there," he told an escort after hugging his wife and walking to the corner of the building. Then he got started.
As he ascended, some building occupants took photos of him from right inside the glassed windows. ("The higher he gets, the more freaked out he's making me," WWE's Seth Rollins, one of Netflix's commentators, said on the livestream.)
“I’m sure I’ll feel a little nervous at the bottom, just because it’s something totally new and I don’t know how it’s going to feel,” Honnold, 40, told Netflix’s Tudum ahead of the climb, which was delayed one day due to weather.
“I’ve spent 30 years climbing rock faces; this is going to be my first big handmade structure, so I’m sure it’ll feel a little different,” he said.
Preparation was key, he said.
“I think the untrained viewer should appreciate the effort and practice and training that goes into it,“ he told Tudum. “Basically, that there’s a plan and I’m executing the plan, and it’s not just willy-nilly and just walk up and try my best.”
Though Honnold won’t be roped or harnessed to the building he’s climbing, which juts nearly a third of a mile into the air, PEOPLE understands that there will be precautions taken during the Skyscraper Live special, including what is being referred to as standard live-TV production safety protocols.
Honnold, who has wanted to scale Taipei 101 for more than a decade, has said that when he starts his climb, there will be some butterflies in his stomach to bat away
“I’m sure I’ll feel a little nervous at the bottom, just because it’s something totally new and I don’t know how it’s going to feel,” he recently told Netflix’s Tudum. “I’ve spent 30 years climbing rock faces; this is going to be my first big handmade structure, so I’m sure it’ll feel a little different.”
Honnold went on to add: “My life is on the line — I don’t really care who’s watching. I care about doing what I’m doing and doing it well.”
Speaking with Variety, Skyscraper Live producers explained their approach to safety.
“There’s a two-tick system,” said Grant Mansfield with Plimsoll Productions. “First and foremost, he [Honnold] has to feel good about it. And we’ve said to him repeatedly, if you’re not feeling it, despite the fact it’s a live broadcast, and there’s a bunch of TV people hanging around, you are under no pressure to do this climb.”
“And the second tick is, if we get in a situation where he’s saying, ‘Yeah, I’m going for it,’ but [if] there are things that bothering us, we have the right to say ‘no,’ “ Mansfield continued. “He won’t be on that building unless we’re all comfortable. But there’s been a huge amount of planning for this. He said he’s the fittest he’s ever been. He’s really been training for this. We’re feeling good about it at this stage.”
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In the event, say, of exhaustion then “we can get him off …. But Alex really knows what he’s doing. He’s an extraordinary kind of athlete,” Mansfield said.
“Every scenario has been mapped out, as you might expect,” Mansfield said. “The main focus has been on keeping Alex safe.”
Among the potential scenarios, however unlikely, is the risk of injury or worse — death.
“It’s obviously a conversation that everybody has,” Netflix executive Jeff Gaspin told Variety. “You can imagine what we’ll do. It’s nothing momentous. We’ll cut away. We have a 10-second delay. Nobody expects or wants to see anything like that to happen. But we will cut away, and it’s as simple as that.”
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Category: General Sports
