Posts Tagged ‘Japan’

Our co editor has often blogged about free diving in its varying disciplines and when doing a little research the other day we came across this extreme demonstration of free diving at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas, or should we say BASE jumping? In this example we see the French free diving world champion with constant weight and no fins perform a base jump – extreme.

The video featuring Guillaume Nery base jumping underwater into the depths of the Blue Hole takes your breath away. The video, an artistic and therefore fictional product, is filmed  by Guillaume’s girlfriend and french champion free-diver Julie Gautier. Guillaume Nery does not claim to have reached the bottom of Dean’s Blue Hole which is an impressive and impossible 202m and the world record in the no-fins discipline is 95m, held by William Trubridge.

Julie Gautier, herself  a French champion has also achieved a great deal in the world of free diving as can be seen by her many underwater videos. What you will watch below was put together by  guillaumenery and filmed by Julie Gautier – a very artistic reflection on an incredibly demanding extreme sport which is gaining more and more in popularity.

Nery and Gautier have just returned from the AIDA team World Championships in Okinawa, Japan where they didn’t exactly run away with the prizes – they were awarded to Denmark, Japan and Finland.

If you want to find out more about what Nery is doing you can visit his blog by clicking on this link http://www.guillaumenery.fr/

The Canadian team have monopolised the tracks at Whistler in sports such as the skeleton – gaining an advantage over their opponents. All the other visiting nations will have just six practice runs under Games conditions when they get to Whistler to take them to a total of 40 descents each on the track before the skeleton gets under way on 18 February. The Canadians will be up near the 400 mark.

There are two individual skeleton events in the Olympic Games: one for men and one for women. Both events consist of four heats held over two days, timed electronically to 0.01 seconds. The individual with the lowest combined time wins. The tracks run from 1200 – 1650 m, 1200 m of which are downhill

Men’s skeleton was raced at the 1928 and 1948 Olympic Winter Games, both in St. Moritz. Skeleton then re-appeared as a permanent Olympic sport for both men and women at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Skeleton got its name from the sled used — originally metal, now fiberglass and metal — as it resembles a human skeleton. To start, a skeleton slider grasps the handles on either side of the sled, runs as fast as possible for approximately 50 metres, then dives head first onto the sled. Sliders lie on their stomachs and steer by shifting their bodies very slightly.

Like the other sliding sports of bobsleigh and luge, the start is crucial in skeleton — where a tenth of a second lead at the start can become three-tenths of a second by the bottom of the run. These athletes train much like sprinters to develop the powerful legs they need to explode onto the track. But speed is not the only factor: they must also find the best line and steer smoothly through each turn to keep their speed high.

Canadian skeleton slider Mellisa Hollingsworth won a bronze medal for Canada at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games shortly after winning the overall World Cup title that season and will start as one of the favourites for the women’s event in Whistler.

She will have to be in top form as speeds of up to 140 kmh can be achieved on what is believed to be the fastest track in the world. Athletes  from Germany, Latvia, United States, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Canada, Korea, Australia, Russia, Norway, Japan, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Ireland, Slovenia,  Bermuda will be lining up to challenge her.

And why not use the home advantage – wouldn’t you – and what else is home advantage for? The Canadians deserve a good return in terms of medals for putting on what we are sure will be a great Winter Olympics – bring them on!

The video below from Blickinsfreie shows you how skeleton is done.

This video from newsliders gives you an idea of the speed you attain as it is filmed from a camera attached to the helmet of the skeleton pilot – terrrrifying!

You may have heard of the pirates who have been operating in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean. Up until now they have been hijacking oil tankers and the like in the hopes of extracting a large ransom for return of the vessel and its cargo. It now seems as though these real life Jack Sparrows are spreading their wings and not only going further afield but also attacking vessels of a different nature.

News that a scuba diving ship operating from one of the world’s greatest diving locations in the Seychelles Islands has been seized is sending shock waves through the Seychelles tourist industry. The ‘Indian Ocean Explorer’ had just dropped her divers on Assumption Island when she was hijacked by the pirates and taken to Harardhare, a pirate stronghold north of Mogadishu.

The Seychelles coral archipelago offers some of the best diving in the world and its pristine white sand beaches attract thousands of tourists to the islands every year. The pirate attack which occurred last weekend and is the second such attack to happen in a month has forced the Seychelles government to deploy security vessels to the outer islands in the archipelago.

According to the International Maritime Bureau 130 vessels were attacked by Somali pirates last year. On Tuesday the Japanese navy joined US, Chinese and EU navies who are patrolling the shipping lanes which lead to the Suez Canal. They face a daunting task in trying to patrol over 400,000 square miles of ocean.

You can see from these videos below, the first from rutgergeeling, the second from KesandSarah, what the attraction is of scuba diving in the Seychelles – be it whale sharks, green turtles or incomparable visibilty – you will understand why this very serious problem has to be resolved.

Our attention was grabbed this morning by news that the ski jump at Brattleboro, Vermont, New Hampshire has been restored to its former glory.

For decades, ski jumpers from around the world launched themselves off the ski jump at Brattleboro’s Harris Hill. The 90-meter wooden jump built by Fred Harris in 1922 was an extreme sports mecca before there was such a thing as extreme sports, but it was deemed unsafe in 2005.

Since then, the community has pitched in to regrade the hill, erect new steel towers and spectator steps and put up a new inrun for skiers to speed down before taking off.

As ski jumping is an extreme that we have rarely covered in the XtremeSport4u blog we thought it might interest our readers to learn a little more about this sport – as ever we are indebted to Wikipedia who have kindly provided some information.

Ski jumping originates from Norway when a soldier launched himself 9.5 metres in the air in front of an audience in 1809. By 1862, ski jumpers were tackling much larger jumps and travelling longer. The first proper competition was held in Trysil in 1862.

Today world ski jump competitions are held on one of three types of hill:

Normal hill competitions

for which the calculation line is found at approximately 80–100 metres (260–330 ft). Distances of up to and over 110 metres (360 ft) can be reached.

Large hill competitions

for which the calculation line is found at approximately 120–130 metres (390–430 ft). Distances of over 145 metres (480 ft) can be obtained on the larger hills. Both individual and team competitions are run on these hills.

Ski-flying competitions

for which the calculation line is found at 185 metres (610 ft). The Ski Flying World Record of 239 metres (780 ft) is held by Bjørn Einar Romøren, and was set in Planica, Slovenia in March 2005.

We can only hope that with the restoration of the ski jump at Brattleboro that U.S. ski jumpers will start to challenge for medals in a sport that has always seemed to be the preserve of Scandinavian and Central European athletes with the only exception to this group of countries being Japan.

The video below from RafalStrek shows six of the biggest ever ski jumps in history with individuals flying through the air for up to 150 metres – awesome, inspiring and frightening but deserving so much respect.

[youtube=http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=kwICYTylnq8]

And if you ever wondered why this sport is so extreme take a look at Bjorn Einar Ramoren crashing in competition last year – with thanks to TheFinnKingVIII for the video. Thankfully Bjorn was able to walk away from the incident but it does show that you have to be a certain kind of person to launch yourself into the air – good luck et bon courage to those Vermonters brave enough to let go!

[youtube=http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=9TAvoizQreg]

We have often written about Jeb Corliss, one of the most celebrated and well known names in the world of base jumping and wingsuit flying , who in April 2006 was arrested while attempting to jump off the Empire State Building in New York. Earlier this week Corliss, 32, of Malibu, California, received probation and community service for his thwarted stunt.

He was convicted of reckless endangerment in December. Prosecutors argued he could have caused injuries by jumping, despite his claims to have studied traffic patterns around the foot of the 102-storey tourist attraction.

The skydiver could have faced up to a year in prison for the offence. The judge, Thomas Farber, said he received letters from Raymond Kelly, New York City Police Department commissioner, and the Empire State Building owners asking for a jail term for Corliss.

Mr Farber, however, rejected the suggestion, saying, “I simply don’t find it warranted in this case.” He added that in all his years as a prosecutor and a judge presiding over murder, rape and other cases, he had never received a letter from a high-ranking police official asking for a specific kind of sentence.

“From some of the letters I received, you would have thought the defendant tried to commit a terrorist act,” the judge said. Mr Farber sentenced Corliss, who had no prior criminal record, to three years’ probation and 100 hours community service, which he said the Californian could complete in his home state.

Corliss has made more than 1,000 safe jumps in countries all around the world including Japan, Russia, France and Malaysia.

Regular readers of this blog will know that Corliss is attempting to be the first man to land on earth, with only a wingsuit and no parachute, and to survive, and then go up and do it again. Details of how this will be achieved are top secret but we do understand that a special landing strip is being designed, somehow to be suspended in the air, which Corliss will have to fly to with pinpoint accuracy.

OMG – sure sounds tough – good luck Jeb.

Below is a video from wingsuitflyer which gives an update on the wingsuit landing project and as its coming up to a year since that release any further news would be greatly received. As for Corliss’s escape from imprisonment – well thank goodness Judge Farber used his great common sense – Corliss is no criminal.

[youtube=http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=UsztEWuC3cs]

“Snow from heaven, not hoses.”

… so boasts Grand Targhee in Wyoming. And it’s no idle boast. The difference between real snow and man-made is enormous, incomparable and… worth discussing. As is the difference between wet and dry snow.

Wet snow, that has gone through repeated melt-freeze cycles, is often called Corn Snow. Under Corn Snow,or Melt-Freeze conditions, a crust forms on the surface that will support your weight when frozen, but turns to deep slush during the heat of the day. The majority of self-sustained skiing injuries occur when people catch an edge in wet, heavy snow.

Dry snow, on the other hand, has little to no liquid water content and is therefore less dense than average, and not sticky. Less dense means there will be a lot of air pockets between the snow crystals, and this is the ‘powder’ that you love to ski in.

The “average” snow to liquid ration is 10:1 – which means that if 10 inches of snow fell and subsequently melted, it would produce 1 inch of liquid precipitation in the rain gauge – or in other words the equivalent of 1 inch of rain. The ratio for wet snow will be less than 10:1 and for dry – higher… it can be as much as 30:1.

To understand the difference between dry snow and wet snow, imagine a bunch of grapes. In this analogy, the grapes are the snow grains and the grape vines are the crystalline bonds between them. Now, imagine that when you wash the grapes, the grape vines dissolve, leaving you with nothing but free-floating grapes. In the snowpack, when water percolates through the snowpack it dissolves the bonds between crystals—the more saturated the snow, the more it dissolves the bonds, thus, dramatically decreasing the strength of the snow.

www.avalanche.org supplied the above diagram and preceding paragraph, I thought the analogy worth reproducing, thank you.

Wet, heavy snow turns to ice MUCH faster than light, fluffy snow because of it’s added water content. Light, fluffy snow actually does not turn into ice as long as the snow itself doesn’t melt.

Snow can also be manufactured using snow cannons (hoses), which actually create tiny granules more like soft hail. This is sometimes called “grits” by those in the southern United States for its similarity to the texture of the food. It is heavier than natural snow and can get slushy as the day progresses. In recent years, snow cannons have been produced that create more natural-looking snow, but these machines are prohibitively expensive.

So there we have it… so now some practical examples. Niseko, Japan has stunningly dry snow which makes it such a fabulous place to ski at. Mount Baker, with the highest snowfall of all, is, apparently, wetter, but amazing. Still a great place, but a different quality to Niseko.

On a broader scale, having done most of my skiing in Europe, we get tired of hearing that “the snow is SO much better in the US of A”. However, there is truth in this boast too. America, and Canada, have fantastic powder. After one day riding the champagne powder of the Rockies a visitor from Europe will, though possibly reluctantly!, agree with this bold statement. The quality of the snow and the terrain are second to none. Though I have to say – the American mountain huts and apres-ski life leave a lot to the imagination… but that is just my humble point of view!

WOW – Skiing doesn’t get any better than this! thanks to randywieman for the video.

… and that’s the difference between wet and dry snow.