There are some world records best left other people. Mad people. Who apparently have no nerves and no nerve endings.
I mean, have you ever belly flopped? For most of us it’s only ever something you do by accident, and it hurts. A lot. For ages.
But some people do it willingly. OK, they’ve given it a cool name – “death diving” – but basically they belly flop from great heights. For fun.
People such as Norway’s Ken Stornes, who this past weekend broke the Death Dive world record, plummeting 40.5m into an icy Norwegian fjord belly first.
Ouch. This is some extreme version of winter wild swimming.
Stornes isn’t new to wince-inducing stunts. The daredevil military veteran has built up a following on Instagram doing things like squats on top of a mountain and base jumping. But he’s also built a bit of a reputation for death diving, because it’s good to have a specialty, right?.
Last weekend he went for the world record – and achieved it, diving from a specially constructed platform into a freezing fjord, where a backup team in the water were waiting for him to make sure he was OK.
Sadly there’s no footage of what his belly looked like after the stunt. You’d be thinking bright red because of the impact, though bright blue would also be a possibility because of the cold. Maybe one pain cancelled out the other?
"Once again we take the death dive world record back to Norway where it belongs," said Ken in his Instagram post.
A fellow Norwegian, Asbjørg Nesje, holds the women’s world record for death diving, at 30.5m.
The comments posted on the video hold the near unanimous verdict that Ken has redefined the meaning of “death defying”.
“Genuinely thought you’d die doing this,” said one.
“How do u not die doing this? Its like hitting concrete,” added another.
Do not try this at your local fjord.
