lmfao
NEWEST EXTREME SPORT... SKYDIVING WITHOUT A PARACHUTE
Extreme-sports nuts are getting even crazier, taking their daredevil stunts to new heights: Skydiving without a parachute!
"You just have to pay attention to where you're headed," says extreme-skydiving champ Brent Jolt.
"You can control your direction as you fall, and you simply aim for the softest area or object on the ground that you can find.
"Very often a large tree will do," Jolt explains. "If you hit it right, you can usually land with only some broken bones and maybe a few lacerations or puncture wounds.
"Of course, in the extreme-sports world those are the trophies we collect -- I treasure every broken bone and dislocated joint I've racked up," says Jolt, who's in a cast since breaking his right leg in a jump two weeks ago.
Extreme athletes like Jolt constantly test the odds of survival with death-defying antics. They ski or ride skateboards down rocky mountains, or wind-surf across churning seas. They skydive from places so low there's barely enough time to open their parachutes, which is known as BASE jumping for the kind of structures they leap from: Buildings, Antenna, Span and Earth).
Jolt has done all that and more, and says he "just got bored." So he decided to see how far he could push things, and came up with a sport he calls "freediving."
Jolt did his first public freedive at a BASE exhibition last year in Australia. Spectators were horrified at first, thinking his parachute had failed to open. But their fear turned to delight when he landed safely in a hayfield and bounced from a high stack of grain onto the ground -- his only injury a broken ankle.
"It was the most thrilling thing I ever saw," says Angel Doorley, president of the extreme-sports club in Sydney that sponsored the exhibition. "We thought he was a goner but there he was, bouncing out of that haystack with barely a scratch. It was inspiring -- our members were working on freedives the next day."
Three months later, the club had organized its first freedive championships and crowned Jolt the U.S. winner. Contestants from Portugal, New Zealand and Ireland also took honors for their nations, although they were not officially sanctioned by their countries.
"As you can imagine, this sort of thing is highly illegal," confides Doorley. "And we've had several people arrested. But we're used to that."
Doorley said three people were killed during his club's competition, "which is a remarkable safety record considering that we had more than a dozen people competing. You'd think it would be a lot higher -- I mean, we're talking about people jumping out of airplanes without parachutes.
"Most of the fatalities happen in the earlier stages of learning the sport."
I'm really intrigued.. Who wants to go to the next competition with me?!
Extreme-sports nuts are getting even crazier, taking their daredevil stunts to new heights: Skydiving without a parachute!
"You just have to pay attention to where you're headed," says extreme-skydiving champ Brent Jolt.
"You can control your direction as you fall, and you simply aim for the softest area or object on the ground that you can find.
"Very often a large tree will do," Jolt explains. "If you hit it right, you can usually land with only some broken bones and maybe a few lacerations or puncture wounds.
"Of course, in the extreme-sports world those are the trophies we collect -- I treasure every broken bone and dislocated joint I've racked up," says Jolt, who's in a cast since breaking his right leg in a jump two weeks ago.
Extreme athletes like Jolt constantly test the odds of survival with death-defying antics. They ski or ride skateboards down rocky mountains, or wind-surf across churning seas. They skydive from places so low there's barely enough time to open their parachutes, which is known as BASE jumping for the kind of structures they leap from: Buildings, Antenna, Span and Earth).
Jolt has done all that and more, and says he "just got bored." So he decided to see how far he could push things, and came up with a sport he calls "freediving."
Jolt did his first public freedive at a BASE exhibition last year in Australia. Spectators were horrified at first, thinking his parachute had failed to open. But their fear turned to delight when he landed safely in a hayfield and bounced from a high stack of grain onto the ground -- his only injury a broken ankle.
"It was the most thrilling thing I ever saw," says Angel Doorley, president of the extreme-sports club in Sydney that sponsored the exhibition. "We thought he was a goner but there he was, bouncing out of that haystack with barely a scratch. It was inspiring -- our members were working on freedives the next day."
Three months later, the club had organized its first freedive championships and crowned Jolt the U.S. winner. Contestants from Portugal, New Zealand and Ireland also took honors for their nations, although they were not officially sanctioned by their countries.
"As you can imagine, this sort of thing is highly illegal," confides Doorley. "And we've had several people arrested. But we're used to that."
Doorley said three people were killed during his club's competition, "which is a remarkable safety record considering that we had more than a dozen people competing. You'd think it would be a lot higher -- I mean, we're talking about people jumping out of airplanes without parachutes.
"Most of the fatalities happen in the earlier stages of learning the sport."
I'm really intrigued.. Who wants to go to the next competition with me?!