James Bond and extreme sports go hand-in-hand. Starting with Rick Sylvester’s ski/BASE jump in The Spy Who Loved Me, the stunts in James Bond films have inspired many extreme athletes. The most recent example of this, perhaps, is the wingsuit jump attempted by Frenchmen Fred Fugen and Vincent Reffert, known as the “Soul Flyers.”
The stunt, sponsored by Red Bull, took a page from James Bond. Or so it seems. At the end of the pre-title sequence of GoldenEye, Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) rides a motorcycle off a cliff in an attempt to jump (with no chute) into a falling plane.
Fugen and Reffert attempted to complete a similar jump.
Using wingsuits, the two jumped from Jungfrau Mountain in Switzerland and then maneuvered themselves into a moving plane. After repeated attempts, both men successfully completed the stunt.
As the video shows, the two flyers reached speeds in excess of 135 k/hr (84 mph)., falling into a moving plane, as opposed to reaching it and climbing inside. This upped the ante over a similar dive completed by the late Patrick de Gayardon, who jumped out of and then quickly back inside a moving plane in 1998.
Last year, another Bond-like stunt was performed in Switzerland. Extreme skier J.T. Holmes completed a “speed ride” down the Eiger, a stunt similar to the CGI surf/glide in Die Another Day. In describing his stunt for 60 Minutes, he said he took a Bond-like approach, one based on being “calculated.”
For sure, this won’t be the last time an extreme athlete “borrows” from Bond. Question is, what Bond stunt will be next?
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