Sacré Bleu!
French athlete Taig Khris is a hero of the inline skating world, but he is as well-known by the French public for skating off tall buildings. Having taken a plunge from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower in 2010, Khris has now jumped from the Sacré-Coeur—the highest point in Paris. He flew down the 492-foot ramp, taking off with the whole city behind him, and soft-landed on an inflatable half pipe. He set a new world distance record with a long jump of 95 feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CJURZ5HAs4
Surf’s Up and Up
Taking place on International Surfing Day to promote Huntington Beach, California, as Surf City, 66 surf-mad record breakers (between 15 and 79 years old) braved the waters on a supersize (42 feet 1 inch long, 11 feet wide) surfboard—so enormous that it had to be lifted into the sea by a forklift truck—to smash the world record for the most people surfing on the same surfboard. The gang of 66 stayed onboard for an impressive 13 seconds to break the record before wiping out.
Russian BASE Jumper
Russian extreme-sports star Valery Rozov endured a 31-day expedition to reach the site of his record-breaking BASE jump. In 2013, he had performed the highest-ever BASE jump on Mount Everest, but that wasn’t enough for the adrenaline junkie. In 2016, he climbed to just below the summit of the sixth-highest mountain in the world, Cho Oyu in China, in an attempt to better his record. From a height of over 25,000 feet, Valery leaped off the mountain, spending 90 seconds in free fall before his parachute opened, and landing on a glacier 5,500 feet below and 11,500 feet away.
100-Foot Back Flip
“I was like, ‘Holy moly, I forgot how long I’d been in the air,’” daredevil Cam Zink told ESPN after his monumental 100-foot backflip in California in 2014. “Man, I’m just staring in the sky for like ever.” The daredevil hit 46 miles per hour going downhill before he took off on the world’s longest dirt-to-dirt mountain bike backflip and then made a perfect landing. Cam compared his 100-foot breakthrough to the 4-minute mile, expecting others to soon take the record farther. We’ll see . . .
Backbreaking Work
Records don’t just happen. New Zealand’s Jed Mildon not only spent three intensive months training for his historic triple BMX backflip, but also had to build a super-ramp, 66 feet high, into a hillside in order to do it. Jed had kept his attempt to become the first-ever rider to perform three full backward rotations secret before attempting it in front of 2,000 spectators. They watched spellbound as he careered down the long ramp, shot up a 11.8-foot super kicker, became airborne, and created history.
