Stuntmen Fly Over Rio, Dodge Building in Wingsuits - East Idaho News
World

Stuntmen Fly Over Rio, Dodge Building in Wingsuits

  Published at

Getty 031813 RioFromTheAir?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1363626695409iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Want to know what it’s like to fly over a densely populated city like Superman?

Norwegian stuntman Jokke Sommer and Frenchman Ludovic Woerth filmed their stunt, which included jumping out of a small plane in wingsuits and gliding through the clouds over Rio de Janeiro.

Sommer, a professional parachuter donned a helmet camera during his jump to give people a bird’s eye view of the Brazilian capital. The stuntmen were sponsored by Red Bull.

“It was more for me to do it just for the fun of it because I always wanted to do an urban wingsuit flight,” Sommer said.

If this death defying stunt wasn’t enough to churn your stomach, the duo decided to glide through a small gap between the Ventura Corporate Towers 460 feet above the ground. At first glance, it looks like the two men are about to suffer a fatal head-on collision with the office building before they thread the needle and get safely though the 26-foot wide gap.

“Once we knew we could actually do it, we just measured the distance from where we had to be dropped, at what altitude and how much the distance from this exact point to the building,” Sommer said.

The winged flyers eventually landed in a nearly empty area that at any other time would be bustling with people and traffic. Sommer and Woerth celebrated not only their stunt, but that they were able to film it.

Sommer posted the video to his YouTube page Friday and already has over 232,000 views.

Sommer also admits that they didn’t have permission to pull off the stunt. In order to make it happen, Sommer and Woerth took to the skies at 5:45 a.m., giving them exactly 20 minutes before the first commercial flight would appear on Rio de Janeiro’s horizon.

This isn’t the team’s first daredevil dive. They’ve careened through canyons, trimmed treetops and flew past rocky mountainsides. After accomplishing this feat, Sommer has his sights set on another city.

“I would love to come to New York and fly. That is beyond my biggest dream,” Sommer said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION