Perched on a strap two centimeters wide stretched up to a hundred meters in height, the tightrope walker Nathan Paulin broke the world record for distance on a slackline 2,200 meters long on Tuesday at Mont Saint-Michel, according to his team. .
“Now I’m really in the euphoria of the finish, so I’m super happy. It’s a very intense experience, in two hours I lived full of emotions and it’s still the case”, a- he told AFP after arriving in the bell room of the abbey around 7:30 p.m.
Nathan Paulin, 28, had started about two hours earlier from the top of a crane located 114 meters above the ground, near the Couesnon dam.
xAttached by a harness and secured by a lifeline, he walked slowly step by step, barefoot on the strap under the eye of drones and cameras, before reaching the famous abbey.
The “highliner” (height slackline) accustomed to world records, fell on the strap a few meters from the finish “for safety reasons”, his entourage had specified.
“At the end, there is a mark on the strap which for me materializes the end. In fact, if I get closer it becomes dangerous because I can touch the building”, he explained to the press. . “When I pass that mark, I just threw myself and went to see my friends. For me it was over. It was not a fall,” he added.
– A “magnificent” place –
The weather finally turned out to be rather mild: despite a few gusts at the start of the afternoon, neither the rain nor the wind disturbed the crossing, which took place under a bright sun.
The choice of Mont Saint-Michel was imposed, “simply because it is a magnificent place which attracted me” but also because “it is important to show this heritage in a different way”, explained Nathan Paulin to AFP before his feat.
Mont Saint-Michel and its bay have been classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1979.
The tightrope walker plans to repeat his crossing on Wednesday afternoon, this time in the other direction starting from the abbey, to “take pictures”, according to his team.
On the strength of his feat, the young man does not intend to stop there.
“In my next dreams, I hope to be able to do it, it would be to go between the Eiffel Tower and the Montparnasse Tower, i.e. 2.7 kilometers. And this crossing proves to me that it is possible, at least technically. After if there is a big big technical challenge, even bigger than here, and we will see if it happens one day”, estimated this lover of thrills.
His previous length record dated from 2017 by crossing 1,662 meters at 300 meters high in the Cirque de Navacelles (Gard and Hérault).
He had in turn been overtaken by several other tightrope walkers, who had traveled more than 2,130 meters in northern Sweden in 2021, said his entourage.
Nathan Paulin is used to spectacular crossings. He won his first length record in 2014, covering 601 meters on the ground in the Lyon region. In 2015 he cleared 403 meters in Reunion, this time in a vacuum, another record.
Twice, Nathan Paulin had also connected the Eiffel Tower to the Trocadéro in 2017 and in 2021.