France’s Tom Pagès has become the first person on earth to BASE jump a motorcycle off a 135m (443-foot) cliff. Both he and the motorcycle required a parachutist to make this stunt possible.
It was done in Avoriaz (a French mountainside resort near the Swiss border), The stunt was performed before the man reached the ramp of 7m (23.3 feet), which is located at the edge the 135m (443ft-high) cliff. He then did three freestyle moves through the streets in the Alpine resort.
The final ramp was reached at 80 km/h, 50 mph. He performed front flips and then pulled his parachutist and landed 55m away (180ft) from the edge. The chute was pulled at 150 km/h (93 miles per hour) He landed at 170m (558ft) lower than his maximum height after deploying the chute.
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“There was no better place for this than Avoriaz! It’s a magical spot: surrounded by nature, with wooden architecture and great infrastructure. The resort really lends itself to freeriding, and it’s the only place I found a vertical cliff face over 130m high,” said Pagès. “The hardest element to manage was the one you can’t see in the video: the wind.”
The project was so wild that Pagès needed new technology to perform it. Laden with helmets, boots, and protective gear, not to mention a motorcycle, he needed a way to deploy the motorcycle’s parachute. For that, he received help from Stéphane Zunino, who developed a parachute for the motorcycle that had a manual release integrated into the seat.
The idea to base jump a motorcycle came to Pagès years ago when he started skydiving. When he later started BASE jumping, the five-time X Games freestyle motocross gold medalist says he couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like with a motorcycle.
It was his intention to do it in 2020 but the pandemic stopped him from doing so. He did find an area where he could blend the disciplines of BASE jumping with freestyle Motocross.
“It’s a career-defining project: combining the two universes that I adore, FMX and parachuting in the same performance,” says Pagès. “It’s also a life-defining one, mixing influences in order to surprise people and showing up where they least expect it.”
