After a 24-hour delay, the American climber Alex Honnold completed yet another cinema-worthy mission. On Sunday (the 25th), he scaled Taipei 101, the 508-meter-tall building in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. All without ropes or safety equipment.
The transmission by Netflix (NFLX34) conveyed the magnitude of the risk: the streaming platform announced there would be a live delay in case of a tragic scenario. The climb, which would have taken place on Saturday (24), was postponed due to the weather.
In 1 hour 30 minutes, Honnold became the second person to complete the climb — but the first to do so without safety equipment. In 2019, the climber had already become famous when the documentary “Free Solo,” about his ascent of the 915-meter El Capitan granite cliff, won the Oscar.
How much did Alex Honnold earn to climb Taipei 101
An adventure like Honnold’s doesn’t come cheap, but the climber himself emphasizes that the amounts are not even comparable to what high-performing athletes in other disciplines receive.
In an interview with The New York Times, Honnold stated that Netflix paid something in the mid-six figures, a term in English referring to amounts around US$500,000.
“Actually, if you compare it with the realm of traditional sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount,” he told the paper. “You know, Major League Baseball players receive contracts of 170 million dollars. Like, someone you’ve never heard of and with whom nobody cares.”
