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00:00All my life, I've chased adventure.
00:04I've climbed unforgiving mountains,
00:06flew on trapeze 30 feet in the air,
00:08and even rode a fucking Bronco for three seconds.
00:12Oh, my god.
00:14But now, even if I'm very far from being an actual pro
00:18athlete, I wanted to see what I could do if I actually trained.
00:22Run, run, run, run.
00:24I'm going into places I've never been before,
00:27risking my life.
00:28Get it under control!
00:30Of course, I can't do this alone.
00:32So I found six of the most extreme athletes on the planet.
00:37Each one is a master of a sport that honestly terrifies me.
00:41They spent years pushing their limits,
00:43and now they're going to face their biggest challenge yet.
00:46All right, please, relax.
00:48Training a very skinny Mexican to survive all of it.
00:54I can't see.
00:55I can't see.
00:56Find a spot where you can get over.
00:58Winsuit into a Red Bull Air Force formation flying at 125 miles per hour.
01:04Kayak off your raging waterfall.
01:06Walk a slackline 100 feet in the air.
01:10Do a backflip from a cliff as high as a building.
01:14Face Mother Nature riding giant waves.
01:18And survive one of the most extreme off-road races in the world.
01:24The Baja 500.
01:26These are not just sports.
01:28They're life or death challenges.
01:30It's gonna take way more than just pushing my body.
01:33I'm gonna have to control my mind even when death is way too close.
01:38But hopefully, with persistence, patience, and the right mentors, I might prove something.
01:44That athletes aren't just born.
01:46They're made.
01:48And that all of us have the ability to do something incredible.
01:54If we're willing to push past the edge.
02:00I'm starting my journey with something I've wanted to do since the first time I saw it.
02:14Wingsuiting is one of the most dangerous sports you could ever do.
02:19It's a little bit of skydiving and a little bit of flying.
02:22And a lot of adrenaline.
02:25Reaching speeds over 150 miles per hour.
02:28There is no room for error.
02:30One bad call, one gust of wind, one tiny mistake.
02:34And the very thin line between flying and falling disappears.
02:48Wingsuiting began in the early 1900s when pioneers attached fabric between their limbs,
03:02trying to imitate flight with mostly deadly results.
03:06The sport came back with a 1969 film called The Gypsy Moths, showcasing skydivers trying early wing designs.
03:13But it wasn't until the late 90s that modern wingsuits with engineered air force and safety systems
03:19turned fantasy into high flying reality.
03:24And just when we thought wingsuiting was already dangerous enough.
03:43The thing about wingsuiting is, you don't get second chances.
03:53And attempting this without real training would just be suicide.
03:56So, I went directly to Lake Elsinore, California to meet one of the best wingsuiters in the world.
04:02Luke!
04:03Hey!
04:04The man, the myth, the legend!
04:05Best to meet you, man!
04:06How you doing?
04:07Ah, good!
04:08Luke Akins, part of the Red Bull Air Force, jumped more than 20,000 times.
04:14And, fun fact, stuntman who's worked on films like Iron Man 3.
04:17So, if there's a human being who can train me how to wingsuit, it's him.
04:21I'm so pumped to meet you.
04:23Are you?
04:23Bro, I remember watching as a kid one of your stunts
04:26when you jumped without a parachute into the net.
04:29That was a big one, man.
04:30Is that what we're doing today?
04:31I know!
04:32No, no, no, no, no.
04:34So, I've seen a lot of formations that you guys do with Red Bull.
04:37I'd love to be able to do that.
04:39So, you want to be one of the people with us?
04:41I want to do a formation.
04:42Sweet.
04:42Yeah.
04:43So, we'll get as far as we can, and that'll depend on what we can do at the end.
04:46My last jump was probably six months ago.
04:48Okay.
04:49When you haven't jumped for a while, there's a little...
04:52For sure.
04:52Nervous and excited are almost the same thing.
04:54What we're going to do to start with is we're just going to go up, we'll make a skydive.
04:57Just have fun.
04:58Just a jump.
04:59Shake the dust off and like, you know, just a good skydive.
05:01Sick.
05:02Sounds like a plan.
05:03All right, let's sign our life away.
05:05My name is Juan Pablo Martinez Uriza.
05:07I have carefully read this release of Liability and sign out of my own free will.
05:13So, we're going to be jumping out at 13,000 feet.
05:15We're going to be landing this way or this way, but we don't fly over the runway.
05:19Understood.
05:19This landing zone is definitely not for beginners.
05:23Located directly next to a lake and on an active runway, a safe landing requires precision and skill.
05:29Skydiving is a passion of mine.
05:36Every single time I jump, I feel free.
05:39But to be honest, it's been a minute since my last jump.
05:42I couldn't stop thinking maybe this was Luke's way of testing me to see if I actually knew how to do this.
05:48Let's go.
05:48We're going right now.
05:49All right.
05:50All right.
05:50Hell yeah, let's fly.
05:51So, it's windy.
05:55It's coming a little bit crosswind.
05:56The wind's coming from the side.
05:57It's tricky right now.
06:02How we doing?
06:05I only had 48 hours to train with Luke.
06:08If I wanted a chance to fly with him in a formation, every second counted.
06:15All right, we're flying, baby.
06:17What's going on?
06:18We're flying on that side somewhere, right in there.
06:21All right, so, Luke, I'm jumping first and you're going after?
06:24Yep.
06:25So, I'm here, turn, and boom.
06:27Yeah.
06:28Right?
06:28Yep.
06:295,500, we'll stomp.
06:31Square, down, split.
06:32You're open by four feet.
06:34Understand.
06:3613,000 feet.
06:39No matter how many times I've done it, jumping out of a plane still gives me that little tingle of hesitation.
06:45It always feels like I'm right on the edge of life and just pretending I'm not scared.
06:50We're ready?
06:51All right.
06:52Hey, this is it.
06:54Let's go.
06:58Hey, this is it.
07:00Let's go.
07:04The instant I was out of that plane, all of my nerves disappeared.
07:08Woo!
07:09Let's go!
07:10Wow!
07:11I genuinely love this feeling, and getting to do it with one of the greatest skydivers to ever live is insane.
07:18Let's go.
07:27Whoa!
07:28Woo!
07:29Woo-hoo!
07:31There we go, brother!
07:33Flare, flare, flare, flare, flare.
07:36Nice.
07:37He kind of went out ass over T-cat a little bit.
07:39He tumbled his exit.
07:42That's all fun and games, and now it's going to get real.
07:44I got a little bit unstable exiting the plane, so let's see what Luke has to say.
07:49How'd you like your exit?
07:50Whoop!
07:51Yeah, I flipped, right?
07:52You flipped.
07:52I flipped entirely.
07:53That's what I was thinking.
07:55Yeah, it's difficult.
07:56So you led with a little bit too much with your shoulder.
07:59Yeah, I definitely messed it up in the exit.
08:00I felt the flop!
08:01No, I'm not going to lie, I felt a little bit scared after 6 months of not doing it.
08:07The initial plan that I have right now is that we'll drop the stuff, and then we'll talk about the wingsuit.
08:12I felt a little bit slow, I felt a little bit torpe, but it went well.
08:17When we jump the wingsuit, it's all about the exit and the opening.
08:20Exit is really important, it's where we can lose control, but because the caravan has a tail, it's pretty low.
08:25We can't jump out and inflate our wings right away, because that lifts us up, and then we can hit the tail of the plane.
08:36So that becomes very dangerous, and that's bad for not just you, the pilots, everybody.
08:42So the proper body position, you'll be in the door like this, and you're just going to hop down like that, and then spread out.
08:47Yeah, I know being in the ground pretending that I'm jumping out of a plane looks very ridiculous.
08:52And then go up, up, stand up straight, there you go, perfect.
08:55Okay, one more. But in the sport this dangerous, you need to have a plan.
08:59When you get it right with the wingsuit, and you get a little bit bigger wingsuit,
09:02you're getting about a three-to-one glide ratio.
09:03And you can even go down and then glide a little bit, right?
09:06Yeah, you can take all that energy, and you get like how we flare our parachute.
09:08We can flare our wingsuits a little bit.
09:09The best that we do normally is three-to-one, except if you look at like Sebastian Alvarez,
09:13you just got the world record wingsuit flight, 42,000 feet, he went 33 miles.
09:17He had a big long tailwind, he was gliding at four-to-one or so.
09:20Four feet forward for every one foot down.
09:22This is what you're going to be jumping. This is a swift four.
09:26Your arms come out here, and your hands zip in.
09:29But the way we make this thing fill up is we have to have air running through here.
09:32And so that's what gives it the shape.
09:33If you didn't have it filled with wind, it would just be dragged.
09:36If we're not moving forward, the wingsuit can't do its job.
09:39It's like a shark.
09:39Yes.
09:40If it's not moving, it dies.
09:41Right.
09:41My first ever wingsuit flight was going to be wearing a Swift 4 model,
09:45a beginner suit with a smaller wing designed for easier control and stability.
09:49When this zips up, your leg straps go inside.
09:51As soon as we start putting that on, you don't stop putting it on until your leg straps are on and tight.
09:58Believe it or not, it's happened where people have not put the leg straps on.
10:01Oh.
10:01And some have lived and some have not.
10:04We don't want to get too far downwind, so we're going to kind of hang right over the runway here.
10:08If we don't like it, what we can do is we can land out in the middle.
10:10Then we don't have to worry about crossing the runway.
10:12Even though I've done more than 300 skydives, this first wingsuit jump felt different.
10:18It's way more stressful.
10:20I have no room for mistakes.
10:22Otherwise, it could be my last.
10:38Look, it's three or four times more sensible than playing without a wingsuit.
10:43I've never experienced it.
10:44Let's see what happens.
10:50All right, we're trying to do it.
10:53We are there.
10:55Almost 13,000 feet.
10:58It's windy up here, so we just look at the ground.
11:00If we need to do another turn with the wingsuit,
11:02to stay on our side, just do it.
11:08Nice and easy.
11:16This was it.
11:17I had no more practice, no more talking about it.
11:20Just me, the wingsuit, and about 13,000 feet of sky.
11:24And the only way forward was down.
11:28There was no turning back.
11:29The moment I exited the plane, everything went wrong.
11:38My wings had wobbled.
11:39It was unstable.
11:40I was drifting, fighting the wind just to stay upright.
11:44But then, I locked in my posture.
11:49And suddenly, I was flying.
11:53Actually, flying.
11:55The wind rushing past my ears, the ground coming up in slow motion.
11:59And for a second, I forgot to be afraid.
12:03I've done multiple jumps before, but never, never anything like this.
12:09It didn't feel like I was falling.
12:11It felt like I was a superhero.
12:14Next was a parachute, but deploying it with a wingsuit is tricky.
12:20If you don't close the leg wing, you can get line twists and send the canopy into a controllable spin.
12:32He's setting up to go the wrong way.
12:33I thought I was home free, but then the wind picked up hard.
12:38He's going to go real fast.
12:42Hold on.
12:42Nobody moves because there's a plane coming right now.
12:44We've got to shoot inbound.
12:47Repeat, parachuter descending on a direct path with incoming aircraft.
12:51As I was about to land on the runway, I turned, and the plane was coming right at me.
12:57Watch behind you!
12:58Mace, we've got to shoot inbound.
13:05Repeat, parachuter descending on a direct path with incoming aircraft.
13:11Watch behind you!
13:22Ah!
13:24Fingers.
13:24The landing was a little bit weird.
13:30The wind is blowing this way, so I saw the plane coming at me, and that was bizarre.
13:36So I think I probably did a mistake in the landing.
13:39I knew wingsuiting was dangerous, but that moment just made it real.
13:43You trying to land in front of the blender there?
13:45I, I, I try to follow your line of landing, and then I'm looking at my right, and I'm like,
13:54holy , the plane is there.
13:55When you drifted, you went a little bit too far downwind.
13:58Once that decision's made and you're not going to clear the runway, it's much better to just land
14:01on the other side.
14:02Okay.
14:02Once we're short, land short of it.
14:04Just land on the other side.
14:05Okay.
14:06Locked and loaded.
14:07We'll fix it.
14:07Todo de este salto estuvo perfecto.
14:11How close were we from an accident?
14:13From one to ten, how bad was it?
14:15Hey, menos el aterrizaje.
14:19Okay, you got a lot to work on from that jump.
14:20You know, we talked about stalling.
14:22Yeah.
14:22Too steep of an angle of attack.
14:24So out, look at how steep we are.
14:26Yeah.
14:26So the suit actually can't fly when it's vertical.
14:29It stalls.
14:30And you were wobbling quite a bit.
14:32Those little movements are things that we'll have to work on.
14:35If you get to the skill level where you can fly in formation, you're going to be tighter.
14:38We'll be half that distance.
14:39Yes.
14:40We'll be almost touching.
14:41So there'll be a bunch of us around, and you'll be in there super tight.
14:43And that's not good if we hit, because we're going pretty fast.
14:46Keeping stability in a tight formation is incredibly hard.
14:49The turbulence from other wingsuits can easily destabilize you, and the consequences,
14:54not the best.
14:54At the end of the day, we had a little issue there with the plane, right?
14:57Yep, yep, yep, yep.
14:58There's a whole bunch of little things of screw-ups along the way that combine to make for an accident.
15:03This was way more difficult than I expected.
15:07As my second and final day of training with Luke began,
15:10it was very clear to me that I wasn't in the place that I needed to be for the formation.
15:15Very good morning.
15:17It was a bit of a voice.
15:19It's more or less 7 in the morning.
15:22It's morning here in Lake Elsinore.
15:25We're going to see Luke again for the second day of training.
15:30The Wingsuit.
15:33I only have two flights, and I want to be very focused to not be wrong,
15:37because that's where the accidents happen.
15:39Good morning.
15:42Are you guys going to still land in the same spot?
15:43Morning. Morning.
15:45If it's open over there, I'd like us to just land over there so he doesn't cross the runway.
15:48Okay.
15:49Are the winds going?
15:50It's light right now, so we have to see.
15:52That's good or that's bad?
15:53Yeah, it's good. It's like it was in the morning.
15:55What I'd like to do on this one is take a step up in the wingsuit.
15:59This was a beginner wingsuit, and now we're going to put you on an intermediate wingsuit,
16:03which is called an ATC.
16:04ATC? We went from Taylor Swift.
16:06It was Taylor Swift.
16:07Yes, it's ATC.
16:08Now we're the ATC.
16:09All right, it was time to level up with the ATC four wingsuit.
16:13It uses a bigger wing designed for speed, agility, and range.
16:18But the larger surface area makes it much harder to regain control if there's a spin or stop.
16:26It'll feel easier to fly, but also things can get bad faster.
16:30With the bigger suit, the more it spins, the more g-forces.
16:33You don't want to spin so fast that you would black out or something.
16:35G-forces are no joke.
16:38Trust me, I've felt what they can do riding in a plane.
16:41But in the wingsuit heading straight for the ground, having your brain shut off,
16:45it's a little bit more of a problem.
16:47So it seems with this one is higher potential, but higher stakes.
16:51Yes.
16:51If you go into a spin and you feel like there's unrecoverable, so everything's bad,
16:55you're spinning, you're looking for the ground, it's still not helping.
16:57You're like this. It's not helping.
16:59Our options with the wingsuit are arch, relax, look for the ground, that'll fly it out.
17:04The other one is we can collapse the wings, pull your legs in, pull your arms in,
17:08and then come back out and look for the ground.
17:11If something's not working, do something different.
17:18I was starting to stay calm, but the truth is, I was nervous.
17:22This new suit demanded precision, and there's so much to think about.
17:26And after nearly getting hit by a plane last time, yeah, I was scared.
17:33Remember, this suit's going to want to have your head high.
17:36It's going to feel very floaty.
17:38Remember to keep driving it, the wind driving it into here.
17:43It's real easy with the bigger suits to like get lazy and get flat.
17:47And when you're flat, you're not very efficient.
17:49My heartbeat was pounding. My mind was racing. I was standing on the edge, staring into nothing.
17:59Only wind and sky.
18:01Lower your back a little bit.
18:03Okay. Ready, go.
18:05I was barely out of the plane.
18:10I made one wrong shift, and I felt it immediately.
18:15Oh, he's spiraling.
18:17The ground tilted and the sky spun around me.
18:20This was a worst-case scenario.
18:22Get it under control!
18:31Oh, he's spiraling.
18:33Get it under control!
18:38This was a worst-case scenario.
18:40I was spinning completely out of control.
18:43I couldn't tell which way was up.
18:44And in the chaos, Luke's words came back to me.
18:47I get into a spin, arc your back, and look for the ground.
18:54That's it!
18:57And suddenly, I was stabilized and flying under control.
19:10Oh my god, that was wild.
19:11He's all whoop, whoop, whoop.
19:14Get his hands down.
19:14Is that what it was?
19:16For a second, I was like, oh god.
19:19He was out of control!
19:22Woo!
19:24I felt it.
19:25I wasn't able to control it.
19:26You were like, vroom, vroom!
19:28These big spirals, and I was like, oh!
19:31Get it fixed, get it fixed!
19:44If we go back to the exit, perfect.
19:46We're right on, but then you let this shoulder dip.
19:49Yeah, I'm going down.
19:50Oh my god, I'm spiraling.
19:52It was a lot of chaos time.
19:54That scares me though, because there's nothing we can do.
19:56We're just watching.
19:57Yeah.
19:57Hoping you sort it out yourself.
19:59It was good to feel the panic and the scenario of what happens if I lose control and I can
20:05recover.
20:05So, that's the positive side.
20:07But I know that I need more training before I'm ready to try a flight in formation.
20:13Dude, I'm stoked that we were able to accomplish so much in two days.
20:16But you're not quite there yet.
20:17I just can't let you up in the air with the guys unless I'm sure you won't be a safety concern.
20:22The only way to get better to be able to start flying in the tight formation with everybody
20:26is to work on the fine tuning of the skills.
20:28Yeah.
20:29What I think would be the best next step, one of the best tools in wingsuiting right now,
20:33there's something called a wingsuit wind tunnel.
20:35There's actually one in Sweden that you can actually fly a wingsuit in the tunnel.
20:39And in one day, in a couple hours.
20:41Okay.
20:41It's equivalent to making 100 skydives.
20:44Hearing that Luke didn't think I'd made enough progress, not the best.
20:47Hey, there we go.
20:49All right, we'll see you, man.
20:50But I want to continue.
20:52Thank you, Luke.
20:53Now, I had to put in the work and prove that I could actually do it.
21:02Stockholm, Sweden, home to the only indoor wingsuit tunnel in the world.
21:07I had just two days to cram in what usually takes years to master.
21:11Thankfully, someone had the free time to build this.
21:16Powerful industrial grade fans grade hurricane force winds up to 880 miles per hour.
21:22The airflow is engineered so precisely, it gives you the exact sensation of an actual flight.
21:27And unlike vertical skydiving tunnels, this one is tilted at a 30-degree angle to match the glide path of a real wingsuit.
21:36Gavin, the time has come.
21:39Yeah.
21:39My coach was Gavin Patenot, flight master and one of the most fearless wingsuiters on the planet.
21:45Woo!
21:46From planes to base jumps, you name it, he's flown from it.
21:50If anyone can get me ready, it was him.
21:53The goal is to do a formation.
21:55And so the manipulation in the air and then the stabilization in the air is going to be crucial.
22:00We'll get you tuned up with all of the right body movements to be able to change levels.
22:05Fly close to people.
22:06All right, let's do it.
22:07Let's rock and roll.
22:08Look at this machine, man.
22:35Woo!
22:35Nice to focus, nice to focus, nice to focus.
22:37I know it's super hard in the beginning.
22:39In the tunnel, if we are not actively trying to always fly a little bit forward,
22:44the wind is always pushing us back.
22:46All right.
22:47Round two.
22:49I know it looks so simple, but staying in control was nearly impossible.
22:55With winds blowing at over 100 kilometers an hour, I felt like a leaf tossed around in a tornado.
23:03And eventually, this happened.
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