The Loop Guide to Clubbing, Drinking, plus West Essex and East London living.

Throw yourself out of a plane? Okay then, throw yourself off a bridge? Still no? Oh, alright then – somersault on a motorbike? Now we’re talking. Whatever you’re into, fancy trying, or are just intrigued to find out how much your adrenaline will rush – with or without a parachute – in Magazine has stuck its neck out and thrown its own body weight around to heighten its sense of adventure. Now, when we say jump…

Motocross

Motocross (often shortened to MX or MotoX) is a form of motorcycle sport or all-terrain vehicle racing held on enclosed off road circuits. Motocross is derived from the French, and traces its origins to British Scrambling competitions. Evidently, Motocross was first known as a British off-road event called Scrambles, which were themselves an evolution of Trials events popular in northern Britain. The first known Scramble took place at Camberley, Surrey in 1924. European motorcyclists adopted the event and gave it a slight makeover, shortening the tracks and adding laps and a few man-made obstacles like jumps.

During the 1930s, the sport grew in popularity, where intense competition over rugged terrain led to technical improvements in motorcycles. The period after the Second World War was dominated by BSA which had become the largest motorcycle company in the world. BSA riders dominated international competitions throughout the 1950s. Fast forward to the early 1980s, and Japanese factories preside over a technology boom in motocross.

Recently, the sport has evolved with sub-disciplines such as stadium events known as Supercross and Arenacross held in indoor arenas. Freestyle (or FMX) events where riders are judged on their jumping and aerial acrobatic skills have gained popularity, as well as Supermoto and Vintage Motocross events. Factoid: The National Sport Health Institute in Englewood, California tested several professional motocross racers in the early ’80s as part of a comparative study of the cardio-vascular fitness of athletes from various disciplines. Athletes from track, American football and soccer were tested, among others. The cardiac stress and strength test results compiled there revealed that the
motocross subjects had higher fitness levels than any other discipline tested. Motocross racers now get their heart rate up to around 180 to 190 beats per minute and hold it there for about 35 minutes.

Skysurfing

This is regarded as just about the most dangerous – but also most exhilarating – of all extreme sports, and requires a lot of training. Skysurfing sounds as if it’s just messingabout - fun, but is in fact distinct skill requiring considerable practice. The jumper must also learn to control the board and their body position so as to open the parachute in a stable configuration. More advanced aerobatics such as loops, rolls and helicopter spins are difficult and are only tackled once the basic manoeuvres have been mastered.

All Skysurfing performances take place in the four dimensional stadium in the sky called freefall. This is the only place where you can fly your body in all three regular dimensions: up/down, left/right, forward/backward, plus the fourth dimension of relative speed. Not even NASA astronauts get to play in four dimensions. In freefall, you can cheat the boundaries of time and space but only a minute at a time.

When a skysurfer is filmed by another skydiver, it gives the appearance that the skysurfer is riding the air in the same way a surfer rides a wave. The downward motion is not very apparent, creating the illusion of gliding on air currents like a sailplane or hang-glider. Over the past few years, skysurfing has become relatively rare among the skydiving community. The novelty may have slightly worn off, and there are now less experienced skysurfers to train new pilots, but the thrill and excitement still exist.

Base Jumping

BASE Jumping is a sport involving the use of a parachute to jump from fixed objects. ‘BASE’ is actually the acronym that stands for the four categories from where a person can jump: Building, Antenna, Span (bridge or arch), Earth (e.g. a cliff edge).

BASE jumping grew out of skydiving. The jumps are generally made from much lower altitudes than skydives; and because BASE jumps generally entail slower airspeeds than typical skydives, a BASE jumper rarely achieves terminal velocity (the speed achieved after twelve seconds of acceleration).

BASE jumpers often use specially designed harnesses and parachute containers with extra large pilot chutes, and many jump with only one parachute, since there would be little time to utilize a reserve parachute. BASE jumping is often featured in action movies, including the famous Mount Asgard jump featured in the pre-credits sequence to The Spy Who Loved Me and from the Eiffel Tower in A View to a Kill.

The 1990s surge of interest in extreme sports saw increasing acceptance of BASE jumping, though it is still widely seen as a daredevil stunt rather than a sport. Interestingly, in the USA there is only one mass event – ‘Bridge Day’, held on the third Saturday of October every year at the New River Gorge Bridge, Fayetteville, West Virginia. This being an extremely high bridge and attracting crowds of 200,000 people, it more than caters for the adrenaline junkies who don’t like flying.