New Guinness Record

Timo and Joscha

Words by Joscha Forstreuter.
Date: 2008-12-30

Joscha Forstreuter and Timo Pritzel set new World Record in High Jumping at Guinnes World Record Show in China

Nie Hao to everybody! Timo Pritzel and I got invited by the Chinese CCTV channel in Beijing to be part of the "Guinness World Record Show". This show had 60 million viewers last year, and this year they expected even more. So I was pretty excited and visiting China for the first time made it even more special to me.

Our record attempt was officially called "Highest Bicycle Ramp Jump". 5.12m was the old record, set by Timo eight years ago on a BMX. We both were not sure if we could top that on a mountain bike with bigger wheels. But I was feeling very comfortable on my new Felt "Sure Shot" dirtjump bike and the ramps they had built for us were perfect. The 8m high roll-in gave us tons of speed to hit the 1.80m launch-ramp and land on a 3m high ramp.

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We started by 4.50m which wasn't a big deal. The next height of 5.00m looked way more impressive. It's a totally different to jump over a high-jump pole. To me it's much more scary than a normal jump. It looks like one big wall. Even if you know that it's not very dangerous to hit the pole as it just falls down you still don't want to hit it.

Timo hit the pole at 5.00m, but then made it easily on his second attempt. Next height was 5.20m, the new record. From the top of the start ramp it looked so high, I was quite sure I wouldn't make it on my first try. But with hard pedalling down the 8m start ramp and extremely pulling on the launch-ramp I took the 5.20m without touching the pole. Timo was next and he made it perfectly, too. Both of us had a new world record under the belt.

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We decided to stop at 5.20m and share the record. The TV-Crew was happy and we were even more stoked.
 
After the show, we stayed a few more days in China to check out the riding scene and the Chinese culture. Watch the videos about our trip below. Videos by Vincent Saccomani.



For more stories and images of the trip go to atmosfair-clothing.com/blog  and blackboxlabs.net