France’s Tom Pagès is officially the first person to ever jump a motorbike off a 135 metre cliff.
The stunt was performed in Avoriaz, a mountainside resort in France, near the Swiss border, and he had to attach a parachute to both himself and the bike to ensure a safe landing.
Before making his way up a 7 metre ramp and jumping off the 135 metre cliff, Pagès performed a few freestyle tricks in the streets of Avoriaz.
He then manoeuvred his way to the ramp, hitting it at 80 km/h. But that's not all, he performed two front-flips. Before pulling the chute, he hit 150 km/h. He then free-fell for a full 30 seconds and landed 170m below his peak height, 55m away from the cliff.
“There was no better place for this than Avoriaz! It’s a magical spot: surrounded by nature, with wooden architecture and great infrastructure. The resort really lends itself to freeriding, and it’s the only place I found a vertical cliff face over 130m high,” says Pagès. “The hardest element to manage was the one you can’t see in the video: the wind.”
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This is such an epic stunt, that Pagès needed new technology just to perform it. He needed to find a way to deploy the bikes parachute after making the jump. So, he went to Stéphane Zunino, who developed a parachute with a manual release integrated into the seat of the bike.
The idea came to Pagès a couple of years back when he first developed a passion for skydiving. When he later started BASE jumping, the five-time X Games freestyle motocross gold medalist says he couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like with a motorcycle.
He intended to try it in 2020, but the pandemic had other plans.
He did finally manage to find a place where he could combine the fields of BASE jumping and freestyle motocross.
“It’s a career-defining project: combining the two universes that I adore, FMX and parachuting in the same performance,” says Pagès. “It’s also a life-defining one, mixing influences in order to surprise people and showing up where they least expect it.”
