FOREWORD

The things I do not understand intrigue me. I am looking forward to reading Alain Robert's book because I hope to find answers to the questions he has relentlessly posed me over the last 20 years. I focus on hand surgery and rehabilitation, and I am drawn to Alain's case in particular.

How has he managed to fully recover and even surpass his prior abilities to climb smooth walls after his terrible fall? That fall should have left him permanently disabled!

And disabled he is... on paper. His wrists have limited movement; his elbows do not open fully any more, restricting the reach of his upper limbs; the two bones of his forearm still do not properly meet. He cannot direct his hands as he would like to, nor can he completely unfurl the muscles of his fingers, the nerves of which have been compressed for too long.

How then is he able, with such limbs, to grip onto small protrusions of only a few millimetres and then have the audacity to risk his life in solo climbs? How does he manage to exceed his natural abilities and compensate for his failing joints? Answers are probably to be found less in medical journals than in the following pages.

In the course of our meetings, Alain has provided some illumination. Without divulging anything which may affect his reflections, I have come to understand that it is his particular philosophy which may hold the key. Alain would ask me whether we have several lives. At worst, he says, we have only one, and therefore we must do our utmost to fill it with the people and the things we love. There is no time to spend horizontally on a hospital bed if we have chosen to live vertically.

On reflection I understand how he convinced me to let him attempt walking so soon after his pelvic fracture. The pain? It wasn't a problem for Alain. He accepted it as the price he had to pay and also as a boundary, a natural red line.

Every time we completed a new surgical procedure to repair prior damage he requested my approval to try out his new limbs as soon as possible on the rock face, accepting the consequences of his bravado. Alain would overtake me as I strode breathless on a rough but easy footpath on the rocks of Saou while he was already at ease clutching onto a '7a' overhang just a few days after his umpteenth round of surgery.

These are astonishing results that a surgeon, blinded by his own vanity, could boast about if they weren't the outcome of the victim's determination rather than the success of the orthopaedic setting.

But 'victim' is not a term that applies to Alain Robert, because at no point along the path of his surgical saga has he displayed a victim's behaviour. Never has he looked to shirk responsibilities, to point fingers, to obtain financial compensation or potential benefits from disability status. There was no time for such behaviour. There was no strength to squander in these diversions from physical recovery. To hell with the tribunals, lawyers, experts, certificates, or indeed insurance and disability allowances — even though he was entitled to them!

Alain Robert remains a medical enigma, one of excellent functional outcome in spite of an unimpressive anatomical result. I had given him a poor prognosis and he has proven me wrong, and for that I thank him.

I look forward to learning how he did it.

Dr Gérard Hoël, Surgeon