Metro

Monday October 19, 2009

Sky high thrills

By ANN TAN and DASHEER NOH


THIRTY-TWO BASE jumpers thrilled the crowd in Penang with their skydiving skills as they leaped off Komtar’s 62nd and 64th floors. That was a 180m jump!

The jumpers took turns taking off from the two floors from 8.30am to 5.30pm yesterday as the crowd watched in awe.

The Komtar International BASE Jump 2009 was organised by the state government, Penang Deve-lopment Corporation and Menara Kuala Lumpur Sdn Bhd.

DARING LEAP . . . A BASE jumper leaping off from Komtar's 62nd and 62nd and 64th floors yesterday.

Clad in their safety suits and helmets, the 12 local and 20 foreign BASE jumpers, including those from Australia, New Zealand, France and United States, landed safely on three marked spots on Komtar’s fifth floor podium.

Among them was Australian Gary Cunningham who had just days earlier accomplished two personal records during the three-day Alor Setar International Tower Jump 2009.

The 37-year-old electronic engineer, whose first jump was at the age of 16, has performed similar feats in at least 10 countries, including Switzerland, France, China, United States and Norway.

A BASE jumper gliding down in his parachute from the Komtar building.

“When I first started doing the jumps, it felt like my soul was separated from my body.

“I was very scared but after a number of jumps, I managed to overcome the fear,” he said.

Dan Vicary, 29, said that the Komtar International BASE Jump was one of his favourites.

“It was quite windy and the slightest change in wind direction changes everything,” said the New Zealander who has made 200 BASE jumps and 4,000 sky dives.

Businessman Nik Khairul Fahmi Nik Bolia, 34, who was participating in the jump for the fourth year, said he kept it a secret from his mother initially as he was afraid she would object to his participation.

“All my other family members support me every year but not my mum,” he said, adding that his mother had since accepted his participation in “crazy sports but still refused to come and see how I do it.”

Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who launched the event, said the extreme sport helped promote Penang as a tourist destination through wide media coverage.

Some of the jumpers also took part in the three-day Alor Setar International Tower Jump 2009 which ended on Friday.

Cunningham beat his own record of 26 successive jumps in a day by jumping 27 times from the tower’s 105m-high open deck during the day and night sessions on the first day.

He also passed the magical mark of 1,000 public display building jumps on his fifth jump on the second day.

“I am really excited to have made the 1,000th jump and also proud to log the most number of jumps for a day in Alor Setar.

“Jumping at night is dangerous as visibility is poor but you have to be brave and be focussed on your mission,” Cunningham said, adding that his previous record of 26 jumps in a day was in 2005.

He said he had also held the world record of 133 jumps over a 24-hour period at the Kuala Lumpur Tower but the record had since been surpassed by someone else.

He said he was helped by fellow jumpers from Malaysia to achieve that landmark figure.

“They helped me pack my chutes for every jump and this saved a lot of time,” Cunningham added.

Twenty-two BASE jumpers, of whom 12 were from Malaysia, took part in the Alor Setar jump.

BASE is the acronym for buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs) which are the locations where the jumpers leap from.

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