Bear Grylls, known to most Americans through his show Man Vs. Wild, uses his talent for adventure & survival to support many different charities.
To raise money for Global Angels, he and two other men broke the World’s Record for longest indoor freefall at the Airkix indoor skydiving tunnel in Milton Keynes, U.K.:
Airkix record breakers
“I’ve never had to concentrate so much in my whole life. It required digging a lot deeper than I expected and has been one of the most intense records I have ever broken:”
The truth is that I had no idea what I was letting myself in for!
The previous [indoor skydiving] record was 1hr 36mins by a US team. I thought: ‘how hard can it be!?’ My two fellow skydivers, Al & Freddie, are excellent freeflyers, and they knew that the most efficient body position to maintain in the wind tunnel over such a long time would be on their backs. This requires a much stronger wind strength than normal skydiving (ie face down), in order to keep them up. This meant that it was much harder for me to maintain stability on my tummy as everything becomes so responsive in that wind strength….
By 50mins I was having to dig deeper than I had in a long time! The record was a record for good reason! And to stay in freefall for over an hour and a half is tough. This for me was becoming one of the hardest mental challenges I had ever known.
By 1hr 30 I was beginning to hallucinate. Several times I started to lose control and Freddie had to help me regain control. By 1hr 35 we were all at our limit and I was fighting to hold it together for a precious couple of minutes longer. At 1hr37 on the dot we all crashed together in a pile. We had broken the record by a matter of a few seconds! It had been touch and go but we had done it.
We were brilliantly supported by Airkix and were also raising awareness for the charity Global Angels that saves children’s lives around the world.
To say an indoor skydiving record was the “most intense” one to beat, is really saying something, when you’re the youngest Brit to have climbed Mt. Everest, first to circumnavigate Great Britain on a waterski, among other feats.
We have a dream of breaking the indoor skydiving freefall record here at Seattle Indoor Skydiving, to raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center. Time to start training!
Just to be clear, if Bear had been able to do the backflips, spins, bounces, loops, etc., that indoor skydivers do, it wouldn’t have been the same: the difficulty was in holding to the freefall position for so long in 220 mph wind.
Bear’s blog is here: http://beargrylls.blogspot.com/
