Philippe Petit

Philippe Petit (French pronunciation: [filip pəti]; born 13 August 1949) is a French highwire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized highwire walks between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on the morning of 7 August 1974. For his unauthorized feat 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the ground – which he referred to as "le coup" – Petit had gathered together a team consisting of two of his closest, childhood friends from France (Jean-Louis Blondeau, and Jean Francois Heckel) joined by four recruited Americans (Alan Welner, David Forman, Barry Greenhouse, and Jim Moore) plus a seventh comrade of Petit's (Mark Lewis, hailing from Australia, had previously been instrumental in aiding Petit wire-walk across Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973). The group spent many months collaborating in detailed preparation, travelling to the World Trade Center multiple times, building an "outdoor" scale model of the roofs of both buildings, brainstorming and theorizing ways to bypass security, how to transport the hundreds of pounds of necessary materials from the street level up 104 stairs, and subsequently rigging the wire Petit would ultimately need... ()