Appears in collection : Damour Fest: Adventures in Gravitation

After reviewing my adventures in gravitation at IHES in 1997-1999, and the original motivations that led to the development of the effective-one-body formalism, I will discuss the path that guided the development of highly accurate waveform models for LIGO-Virgo's searches and inference studies, including the synergistic interplay between analytical and numerical relativity. I will conclude with highlights on the science that these waveform models have unveiled, focusing on the latest LIGO-Virgo’s observing run.