zlacker

The Taipei tourism bureau disagrees. Many here as well. The more eyes on Taiwan, the better. I'm grateful Alex was willing to risk his life for this spectacle, now potentially millions will have at least some concept of Taipei and Taiwan in their minds.

>>komali+(OP)
That a government would be willing to risk this for publicity isn't really changing my mind.

"Come to Taiwan; you may or may not watch someone plummet to their death while here" doesn't appeal to me, personally anyway. Anyway that guy that did it with safety equipment a few years back made the rounds in the news too, so not sure this was necessary in that regard.

>>komali+(OP)
Did he do this climb with no safety equipment for Taiwan or for Alex?

I'm with the OP - watching people so willfully put their lives in danger isn't my cup of tea. I'm just glad he didn't die.

>>squigz+B
C'mon, didn't some guy do a skydive from nearly outer space? Do you criticize the country he landed in? Or red bull for sponsoring it or the many other extreme sports?

Injury and death happens in rock climbing even when tethered. Not often but it does happen, that's the nature of the sport and it's the same as BMX, skateboarding, motocross, any kind of racing.

It's also the same as just living - go look up Taiwan traffic deaths. There's so much more dangerous things happening here and wherever you live, it just seems silly to criticize someone for doing an extreme sport publicly.

There's like one injury per NFL game ffs...

>>Secret+g1
You put your life in danger every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Statistically more danger than a free solo climber.

>>komali+Q3
If Baumgartner - or any athlete/governing body for a sport - forewent safety measures to make it a better spectacle, then yes, I would be criticizing them!

>>squigz+B
Don't watch then. Clearly enough people around the world found some kind of value in it. If you didn't, just jog on.

>>komali+V3
Per trip!?

>>komali+V3
False equivalence. It's by no means required to free climb a skyscraper. While you might say it's also not required to get behind the wheel of a car, the difficulty in getting places (like a job, for example) without doing so in many locations makes it more or less required.

>>komali+V3
Driving is more dangerous than a lot of things, but free solo definitely isn't one of them.

>>kelnos+f6
Well then rather than criticize a guy for doing an extreme sport, perhaps we can direct our energy inwards towards why we allowed ourselves to design such a fatal society.

>>squigz+j4
They all forgo the safety measures of "don't smash into each other's heads" despite repeated studies showing NFL players frequently have long term brain damage from the sport.

It's an extreme sport and a thrilling thing to watch. The danger is exciting and makes his accomplishment all the more stunning. I think it's really cool that there are humans willing to push the limits of the human experience like this.

>>kelnos+f6
Except, using your malleable logic the response is easy, this is Honnold's job.

>>komali+V3
> Statistically more danger than a free solo climber.

While I don't have statistics on free solo death rate per climb compared to death per car trip, this is most likely very, very wrong. You should really stop throwing such strange wild claims..

>>kelnos+f6
Some people drive to their jobs, some people climb shit as their jobs... where's the problem?

>>qnpnpm+ge
Of all the thousands of times tens of thousands people climb, only 30 die per year. Of that 30, 30% are free solo deaths.

Free solo climbing is incredibly dangerous, but the people who do it (usually) prepare extensively and train their whole lives.

https://gitnux.org/rock-climbing-death-statistics/

This is in contradiction to the experience of driving, where any number of people on the road with you are untrained, undertrained, drunk, or suffering diseases that affect their ability to drive. Or just doing crimes like speeding or dangerous driving. So when climbing, your fate is entirely in your hands and that of nature's. When driving, it's in the hands of many strangers.

>>komali+V3
Even the best drivers wear seatbelts.

>>komali+mn
>>> You put your life in danger every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Statistically more danger than a free solo climber.

>> While I don't have statistics on free solo death rate per climb compared to death per car trip, this is most likely very, very wrong. You should really stop throwing such strange wild claims..

> Of all the thousands of times tens of thousands people climb, only 30 die per year. Of that 30, 30% are free solo deaths.

So? I would think few people die from free soloing at height not because it’s relatively safe, but because very few people do it.

>>komali+mn
You did not adress the point though. This isn't about the tens of thousands of people climbing, it's about the ones climbing free-solo, which is a much, much smaller number.

>>Secret+g1
He did it because he thought it would be cool to free solo a building. He grew up idolizing Alain Robert, a french soloist who made his bread and butter out of soloing buildings. The guy was free soloing for free on his own without telling anyone about it for years, living out of his mom's minivan and eating cheap food, the media attention just allows him to be more comfortable as he keeps climbing obsessively. Also running his foundation probably gives a lot of meaning to what he's doing, he'd just be your average dirtbag loser otherwise.

I'm going to add that his coolest achievements were done with ropes. The friendly race to climbing a route graded 5.15 with Sonnie Trotter and Tommy Caldwell is a lot more interesting to me.