Alex Honnold completed a death-defying climb of one of the world’s tallest buildings. However, he revealed that the payday he received for tempting fate at 1,667 feet was lower than what one would expect it to be. Honnold, 40, climbed the massive skyscraper in Taipei without any safety equipment in a thrilling feat of athleticism […]
Alex Honnold completed a death-defying climb of one of the world’s tallest buildings. However, he revealed that the payday he received for tempting fate at 1,667 feet was lower than what one would expect it to be.
Honnold, 40, climbed the massive skyscraper in Taipei without any safety equipment in a thrilling feat of athleticism that was broadcast live on Netflix on Sunday, January 25. Days prior to the big event, the Free Solo climber told The New York Times in a January 23 interview that, compared to what other professional athletes make, the payment he got from the gig is “embarrassing.”
“Actually, if you put it in the context of mainstream sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount,” he said, per E! News. “You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts. Like, someone you haven’t even heard of and that nobody cares about.”
Although he did not share the exact sum he was paid for the climb, The Times noted that it was “mid-six figures.” Luckily, it’s never been about the money for Honnold, who first rose to fame in 2017 for being the first person to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without any safety equipment.
“If there was no TV program and the building gave me permission to go do the thing,” he said. “I would do the thing because I know I can, and it’d be amazing.”
The climber shares daughters June, 3, and Alice, 23 months, with wife Sanni McCandless, who was present at the climb. He took a little more than an hour and a half to scale the 101-story building. He previously spoke on the Jay Shetty podcast, where he revealed he’s been trying to plan this climb for a while. He explained that he initially scouted the skyscraper for a project in 2013 that fell through.
“So, for the last 12 years I’ve known that it was possible. The building is honestly uniquely suited for climbing.”
As Globe previously reported, he’d been wanting to branch out of rock climbing into manmade structures for quite some time.
“Buildings are steeper than rock faces. Most rock faces aren’t actually vertical. Or, they’re not vertical the whole way, [like] the building is,” he told Netflix’s Tudum.
“In some ways, it’s less intimidating than the big free solos [on rocks] that I’ve done. The challenge comes from the overall physicality of it,” he added, noting that he will have to climb 100 feet at a time between balconies. “The fatigue that [sets in] over the course of the building is slightly harder to anticipate. I don’t know how it’s gonna feel.”
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Category: General Sports
