Honnold’s climb is a masterclass in balancing fear with joy

TAIPEI (TVBS News) — To the millions who watched Alex Honnold scale Taipei 101 (台北101) without a rope on Sunday (Jan. 25), the climb looked terrifying. We saw a man managing mortal risk to reach the summit. His wife, Sanni, saw something else: her husband tempering fear with "childlike joy" in a 91-minute play — the balancing act we failed to grasp.

Sanni Honnold watched the ascent from inside the 1,667-foot Taiwanese skyscraper, separated from her husband by glass. At a press conference afterward, she offered an insider's perspective on a man often described as a daredevil. The public, she said, may not understand "how much fun he's having and just how joyful he is when he's doing it."

"It's a childlike joy," Sanni said, her voice softening as she channeled her husband's thoughts: "'I'm up here and I'm playing.'" She added, "I think that was a really cool part of today, that we all got to just watch him have a lot of fun."

The insight reframes what viewers experienced during Netflix's live broadcast. While the audience held its breath, Honnold was tempering stress and fear with something closer to play — a psychological approach that the spectacle of the climb obscured. The danger was real, but so was the joy.

Honnold, 40, acknowledged that the public often misreads his motivations. He said the biggest challenge of the climb was not physical but mental: "staying calm" amid the crowd, the cameras, and the pressure of the moment. "I was a little more nervous getting off the ground," Honnold said. "And then as I climbed, I relaxed more and more... I was like, Oh, this is so fun. I mean, this is why I do it. It was incredible."

The American climber also reflected on broader trends in his sport. He observed that fewer people attempt free solo today than in the early 1990s, attributing the shift to expanded climbing infrastructure — particularly urban gyms — and changing cultural attitudes toward risk.

"There are plenty of people out still adventuring and climbing, but I think that there are far more climbers now, and most of them are accessing it from a totally safe environment," Honnold said. He called the decline "sort of a broader question around risk-taking and risk tolerance," though he did not cite statistics to support his observation.

For Honnold, the childlike joy his wife described coexists with careful deliberation. He said he has become "more selective about projects" since becoming a father. "Having a family hasn't diminished my love of climbing," he said, "but I just choose my objectives carefully and then train for them carefully and make sure I execute well."

The balancing act — joy and caution, passion and selectivity — may be what separates Honnold from the daredevil image. Sanni put it simply: we saw the risk, but we missed the play. ◼