Alain Robert

About

Alain is a French rock and urban climber whose career has been characterized by an ever-expanding list of famous landmarks which includes the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House and the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, as well as the world’s tallest skyscrapers.

Alain Robert polished his rock-climbing skills in the French Alps before turning to buildings.

While scaling the Willis Tower, then known as the Sears Tower, in Chicago in 1999, he encountered the most challenging climbing conditions in his career. Near the top of the 108-story building, a thick fog set in that covered the glass and metal wall of the last 20 floors with moisture, making it dangerously slippery. He overcame the difficulties and reached the top. Alain Robert was the second man to scale the Willis Tower.

In February 2003, he legally climbed the 200-metre (656 ft) National Bank of Abu Dhabi, UAE, watched by about 100,000 spectators. It became more frequent for Robert to be paid to scale buildings as part of publicity efforts. In May 2003, he was paid approximately $18,000 to climb the 95-metre (312 ft) Lloyd’s building to promote the premiere of the movie Spider-Man on the British television channel Sky Movies. On 19 October 2004, he scaled the 187-metre (614 ft) headquarters of the French oil company Total while wearing a Spider-Man costume.

On 5 November 2010, starting at 6pm, Robert took 35 minutes to scale the Singapore Flyer. It was the first time he climbed a circular, moving structure and became the first person to climb around the world’s tallest observatory wheel.

Robert is managed by English licensed football agent Bryan Yeubrey.

There is an award-winning 52-minute documentary about Robert titled The Wall Crawler by Director/Producer Julie Cohen, released in 1998.

The Channel 4 series Cutting Edge covered Robert in an episode entitled The Human Spider in April 2008.

On 5 June 2008, Alain climbed the New York Times Building in New York. He unfurled a banner with a slogan about global warming.

Alain’s presentations and speeches focus on the nature of success–he explains how the rigour of an athlete’s training regime can be applied to any area of life to achieve positive results.