Posts Tagged ‘Red Bull’

CBS’ 60 Minutes calls wingsuit proximity flying “the world’s most dangerous sport” – so of course Red Bull have their finger on its pulse.

A brief reminder of some wingsujit facts and figures:

A typical skydiver’s terminal velocity: 110 to 140 mph or from 180 to 225 km/h.

A Wingsuit Flyer’s velocity: dramatically reduced speeds, a momentary speed of 25 mph or 40 km/h has been recorded, however 60 mph or 95 km/h is more typical.

Materials used in wingsuit: Rip-Stop nylon and or Parapack with thin plastic ribs

Can you do it? In the Skydivers Information ManualtThe United States Parachute Association (USPA) recommends that any jumper flying a wingsuit for the first time must have at least 200 jumps and be accompanied by an instructor or 500 jumps experience without instruction… Heed their advice.

For wannabe wingsuit flyers Red Bull have produced the ultimate movie, due to be released this summer. It’s called the Human Flight 3D Movie (redbull)…

This is a partially fictionalised film, but it is inspired by the members of the elite Red Bull Airforce who are themselves appearing on camera – it would be pretty hard to find stuntmen for this kind of extreme-ness!

Human Flight 3D is an authentic look at the dangerous but thrilling culture of this elite aerial sport and being 3D it allows the audience the virtual experience of flying alongside the world’s top precision skydiving, BASEjumping and wingsuit flyers who make up the Red Bull Air Force.

Pundits say that the storyline might be weak but the flying will be awesome!

It’s impressive on YouTube but on the big screen and in 3D it’ll be like you’re there with a wingsuit on, a ‘chute on your back and part of the elite team. It will allow you to experience the thrill, the adrenaline rush and the pure primal dream of flying like a bird.

Keep your eyes open for the movie. If you want to know what it feels like to fly like a bird but don’t have quite enough courage, or perhaps money, to do it yourself, then this’ll be the next best thing.

Another challenging extreme adventure race to keep an eye on… The Red Bull X-Alps (redbull). Thirty of the world’s best endurance athletes and paragliding pilots, specially selected for their skills, stamina and guts will be invited to take part in the 2011 event.

The race begins in Salzberg, Austria and finishes in Monaco in the South of France – from the mountains to the Med.

In between are eight turnpoints in Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France that force the participants through 864km of treacherous mountain terrain.

The athletes can either fly with their paraglider or hike, carrying their equipment with them. The race goes on day and night, sun or snow, until the first pilot reaches goal.

Motorised transport is absolutely forbidden apart from a back-up supporter (only one) who can help provide food, equipment and information. However, your paraglider, harness, rescue parachute, helmet, emergency signal rocket, reflector belt and tracking device stays with you  at all times and are not  allowed to hitch a ride with your supporter!

There are a few more rules and regulations that competitors need to be aware of:

• Athletes may chose any route they like, but must pass all turnpoints.
  

• Each athlete has only one supporter to look after them.
  

• Travel through tunnels that connect valleys are prohibited.
  

• International Visual Flight Rules (VFR) air regulations must be obeyed.
  

• The race stops 48 hours after the winner arrives in goal.

Chrigel Maurer and supporter Thomas Theurillat (Team SUI3) made an unbeatable team in the 2009 event taking the lead early on and completing the race in under 10 days. They will undoubtably be the team to beat in 2011. Although Chrigel claims that it was a rather nice relaxed adventure for he and his supporter he did admit that “we have never been as exhausted as during the final days of the race and we had to learn to deal with that.”

On July 27th 2010 applications for the world’s toughest adventure race opened, and budding athletes have until September 30th (2010) to register their intent to participate. The Red Bull X-Alps 2011 will be the fifth edition.

Potential athletes must prove to a selection committee that they have outstanding paragliding skills, top-level endurance and extensive Alpine experience. Only 30 athletes will be chosen to participate in the 864km race, which begins in Salzburg on July 17, 2011.

Applications must be made via the newly re-launched official website, www.redbullxalps.com.

Good luck with your applications… We’d love to know if you were successful.

A bit of weekend entertainment on a grey and grizzly day… formation wingsuit flying at its best…

Incredible how manoeuvrable they are. When you think of the speed they are flying, the gradient that they are falling at, I think it is quite incredible…

At the age of 23 Shaun White is already a veteran of the extreme sport of snow boarding. He turned professional at the age of 13 and is now the biggest name in the sport. Last week he won the gold medal in the men’s half pipe at Whistler – but how much was down to a sponsor with limitless funds, or was it just good luck, or was it the great professionalism that White emulates.

Photo courtesy of Connie Scheer from The Meeting Network

The answer is they were probably all involved – let us explain.

The Red Bull connection

Our old friends Red Bull, White’s main sponsor, generously created a half pipe for White to train on in the middle of the mountains in Colorado – only accessible by helicopter. Fair dinkum and there is no doubt that White used this facility to his great advantage. Check out what was created in this video from redbull

The Good Luck

You could refer to this as bad luck, depending on which side of the table you sit. Two of White’s main rivals, team mates Danny Davis and Kevin Pearce were both unable to compete due to injury. Davis has a spinal fracture after an accident on a quad bike some ten days ago and Pearce is in a bad way after a very bad crash whilst practicing at the end of December. We wish them both a speedy recovery but their absence was for White a bit of luck.

The professionalism of White

Whatever is said about the benefits of a personal training space and the fortunate absence of two main rivals we most certainly bow to the great professionalism of White. He had won the half pipe in Turin in 2006 and wanted to win again. But it had all been done before, snow boarding was deja vu. Not for White, he went up to his private training ground and with his coach, Bud Keene, determined to create something new – a ‘WOW’ factor.

They came up with the dramatic spiraling Double McTwist 1260 which became known as the Tomahawk. White was so far ahead after his first run which in his own words included a “good-sized” backside air, a front double cork 1080, a cab-double cork 1080, a frontside stalefish 540 and a backside 900 to finish that it was all over in respect of the gold medal.

Ever the professional White wanted to show the world what he could do and so in his second run, which scored an amazing 48.4 points, he pulled off the perfect Tomahawk. Incredible stuff and testimony to the professional.

Peetu Piiroinen of Finland was the only one to put serious pressure on White, with a second-run score of 45.0. He finished with the silver medal. The bigger podium surprise was the presence of the American Scotty Lago, who used a big first run to capture a somewhat surprising bronze medal.

We are able to show the Tomahawk in this video from jamieoverlooked and wonder what the flying Tomato will come up with when he defends his gold medal again in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. The Tomato may need more than a Tomahawk.

When you get a line up that includes Terje, Travis Rice, Daniel Ek, Scotty Lago and Torstein Horgmo and throw in the extreme sports ever present sponsors in the shape of Red Bull you are likely to have some thrilling action. And that is what you can see in this thrilling video from extremityTV which shows all the thrills and spills of snowboarding.

These extreme snowscrapers were in action at the beginning of 2009 when Red Bull set up a snowboard park in central New York with a backdrop of high rise buildings – perhaps not the usual environment for snowboarding but it certainly allows many more people to witness the skills of these great athletes and so hopefully it might inspire others to follow in their footsteps….enjoy

If you are a keen snowboarder and extreme winter sports enthusiast and have been wondering what happened to Shaun White between the end of the 2009 winter season and his re-appearance in New Zealand late August, wonder no further…

This is what a powerful sponsor (redbull) can do to on behalf of a top athlete.

Shaun White is an incomparable snowboarder who has constantly taken the sport to extreme levels. He is the first athlete ever to land back to back double corks and remains the only skater to land the body varial frontside 540 (The Armadillo).

He is also the first snowboarder to win back-to-back gold medals in the Winter X-Games Superpipe. He is the first (and only) person to win both a Summer and Winter Dew Cup. He won the Revolver Golden God Award for “Most Metal Athlete” and he has won TransWorld SNOWboarding Rider Of The Year twice, once in 2003  and again in 2006.

Red Bull, a keen extreme sports promoter, has reason to put their faith in Shaun White.

In February 2009 he teamed up with Red Bull to create a custom-made half pipe in the rugged depths of the San Juan mountains outside Silverton, Colorado. This would allow him to work on a series of new tricks that will change the sport forever

This was Project X.

“I’ve had all these tricks I wanted to try. I just needed a place to figure them out,” said White. Not only the place, but the privacy… not only then privacy but perfect conditions… imagine a half-pipe never touched before by another soul…

It took 2 months and 30 heli-bomb dropped avalanches to get enough loose snow to form the perfect pipe.

Not only 30 heli-bombs to move 250,000 cubic yards of snow, but 300 man hours, 7,200 foam blocks and 8,000 lbs of welded steel were used to create the world’s first on-mountain snowboarding foam pit to allow White to practice his death defying tricks.

“You have to keep pushing yourself as an athlete” he says, and in his vocabulary this means pushing himself beyond what has been, to date, considered possible.

He aerial assaulted the foam pit trying out trick after trick allowing the conditions to give him the freedom of seeing whether the tricks in his mind could actually be carried out. And when he had perfected them in the pit, he took them to his very own pipe.

And so, with help from Red Bull, he has taken the sport from today into tomorrow…

A front double cork 10, a switchback 900, double back rodeo and cab double cork 10 are all things to look out for when White performs this year.

That formidable training has already born fruit. He won the NZ Open World Cup late August by pulling off a frontside lein air, backside 900, frontside 720, cab double cork 1080, to a front 1080 in his first run, and a straight air, backside 500, frontside 720, cab double cork 1080, front double cork 1080 on his second run.

With Project X, Red Bull demonstrates how the company is ‘changing the game’ when it comes to investing its marketing dollars. While some brands are investing millions of dollars in signage and presenting sponsorships, Red Bull is radically changing, owning, and creating sports properties and unique concepts of its own.

With Project X, Red Bull takes athlete/partnerships/endorsements to a new level. Both brands (Red Bull and Shaun White) will clearly benefit from this campaign – and this will also help Red Bull’s exposure leading into the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

The might and power of Red Bull allowed this dream to become a reality for White and perhaps one day Silverton too will benefit from Project X. The half pipe is completely visible from the ski area so perhaps one day it can be used by everyone…

You can see more about Project X here: www.redbullprojectx.com