Comment by komali2
4 hours ago
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.
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.
You put your life in danger every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Statistically more danger than a free solo climber.
> 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..
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.
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Driving is more dangerous than a lot of things, but free solo definitely isn't one of them.
Per trip!?
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.
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...
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!
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Don't watch then. Clearly enough people around the world found some kind of value in it. If you didn't, just jog on.