iStockphoto / Mauricio Graiki
With most Extreme Sports athletes stuck at home like the rest of us, the past few weeks have been an excellent opportunity for them to dive into the archives and share old footage that nobody’s ever seen before.
I’ve seen a ton of these clips coming out of the Surfing community but this gnarly skydiving clip shared on The Inertia is one of the more surreal moments I’ve seen shared so far. The unearthed footage from years back was shared by skydiver Ben Pigeon and it shows a life-saving maneuver after one of the jumpers was knocked out cold.
He shared it on his Facebook with the caption: “I am posting this because I am bored,” Pigeon wrote, “but also to promote the 6 foot rule [sic]. If we had used the 6’ rule during this jump. A femur would not have connected with my head at 200 plus mph. But then again, following the 6 foot rule, a fellow jumper would not have been allowed to pull my chute when I was knocked unconscious at 10,000 feet.”.
This ‘6 foot rule’ here is actually a joke about our current efforts at staying apart in public and not a real rule in skydiving but it would’ve prevented that dude from taking a leg to the head at 200mph and losing three days of memory:
[protected-iframe id=”45e24f98cad7f41f10ec4d826cd34627-97886205-92965040″ info=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fben.pigeon%2Fvideos%2F10100602866477870%2F&show_text=0&width=560″ width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no”]
Here’s another angle of the action so you can really soak it all in:
[protected-iframe id=”03945ccc5acd545964d01dac32503f43-97886205-92965040″ info=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fben.pigeon%2Fvideos%2F10100603014995240%2F&show_text=0&width=560″ width=”560″ height=”420″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no”]
He added:
For nonskydivers, finding the drop zone can be difficult. Especially at this dz because it is all farmland, and it all looks the same. You have to identify roads to figure out where you are. I was so concussed that lost 3 days of memory. How I found the drop zone is beyond me. I could have dropped into power lines or the highway. Not only did I find it. I flew a perfect student pattern, but did not have the strength to flare (meaning the landing hurt also). I was so out of it. When first asked if I was ok, I said ‘what do you mean I just got out of my tent,’ and then pointed to my parachute. I am not saying Jesus took the toggles, but someone looked after me that day.
My biggest takeaway from this is to only get go skydiving with people who are extremely experienced. If you plan on jumping out of a plane you should do it with someone who is capable of saving your life if you’re knocked unconscious, even if that person is the dude who knocked you out with a flying to the head at 200 MPH.
On Facebook, he added a long story from the perspective of the guy whose life was saved (Andy). You can check that out here on Facebook if you want to see the long-form explanation of what happened.