Dressed in red, Robert celebrated as he reached the top of the 187m-tall Tour TotalEnergies building in the French capital’s La Defense business district. “I want to send people the message that being 60 is nothing. You can still play sports, be active, do great things,” he said. “I promised myself several years ago that when I reached 60, I would climb this tower again because 60 is the retirement age in France and I thought it was a nice touch.” Robert, who also wanted to use the climb to raise awareness of the need to act on climate change, had already climbed the TotalEnergies tower on several occasions. He began climbing in 1975, training on the cliffs near his hometown of Valence in southern France. He took up solo climbing in 1977. Since then, he has scaled more than 150 towering structures around the world, including Dubai’s Burj Khalifa – the world’s tallest building, the Eiffel Tower and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Often climbing without a permit, he has been arrested repeatedly. Robert climbs without a harness, using only his bare hands, a pair of climbing shoes and a bag of chalk powder to wipe away the sweat.
