Philippe ribiere biography definition

Climbers like to nitpick how our relatively slight variations in body size and shape lend themselves to drastic differences in grades. “Oh, you have a +2 Ape Index, but I’m a -1 so that V5 is at least V6 for me.” But for Philippe Ribiere climbing isn’t just harder, it should actually be impossible.

And now, he has the scientific evidence to prove it.

Philippe Ribiere was born with a variation of Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome. Recently, a couple of researchers from the School of Sport Sciences & Technology at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and the Institute of Movement Sciences at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France, teamed up to study and quantify the consequences of Philippe’s disabilities on his grip performance, and investigate finger-grip capacities of disabled climbers in general.

What they discovered was, first, that Philippe Ribiere clearly has less maximal finger force than other climbers, with deficit