William, a veteran player with 800 skydiving experiences and 400 high-altitude wingsuit experiences, said that the awareness of this sport abroad is much greater than that in China. There are many well-equipped skydiving spots abroad, basically located not far from urban communities. Many players can go and play "doorstep" on weekends.
Skydiving bases abroad are more complete and can satisfy extreme enthusiasts for a weekend's entertainment.
However, wingsuit flying is still a niche sport. Based on the data provided by insiders, there are incomplete statistics. The number of people who have performed high-altitude wingsuit flight internationally has exceeded 10,000, and there should be about a hundred people who have performed high-altitude wingsuit flight in China. , there are less than 20 people who can perform low-altitude wingsuit, and 10 of them are only at the entry-level stage of low-altitude flight.
In recent years, some domestic players have also been exploring ways to play wingsuit flying.
Yu Yin performed a wingsuit flight in the Himalayas in 2017
In 2017, Chinese girl Yu Yin jumped from a high altitude in the Himalayas wearing a wingsuit and finally landed successfully, becoming the first Chinese to fly in a wingsuit in the Himalayas.
Zhang Shupeng is currently a representative figure among domestic wingsuit flying athletes. He has professional-level system theory and extremely rich wingsuit flying experience.
Zhang Shupeng at the Tianmen Mountain World Championships
As a member of the Chinese paragliding team, he won the 2009 World Paragliding Fixed-Point Championship. In 2013, he came into contact with and learned wingsuit flying in the United States, and has since won honors in many world-class wingsuit flying competitions. So far, he has performed more than 3,000 wingsuit flights, including more than 2,000 high-altitude wingsuit flights. The cumulative flight experience in Tianmen Mountain is 1060 times.
Why does this celebrity fly wingsuits in Tianmen Mountain so frequently? If you want to talk about the development of wingsuit flying in China, you will find that Tianmen Mountain is always a name that cannot be avoided.
The sight of a wingsuit flyer in the Tianmen Mountain Scenic Area surprised tourists
Legend of Tianmen
On September 24, 2011, Jeb Corliss, one of the world's top wingsuit flying masters from the United States, jumped from a helicopter hundreds of meters above the Tianmen Cave in the Tianmen Mountain Scenic Area and flew at 220 kilometers per hour. The flight speed passed through Tianmen Cave and landed successfully after continuing to fly for about 40 seconds. He became the first wingsuit flyer in the world to fly through the world's highest mountain cave.
Accompanying this spectacle, there were 7 other wingsuit flyers from six countries, who jointly completed the challenge of high-altitude wingsuit jumps from the Tianmen Mountain cableway, cliff flying platform, and helicopter.
Amazing flying moments of top American wingsuit pilot Jeb Chris
This extreme event jumped into the Chinese people's horizons in 2011, and the entire performance became a sensation in the Chinese extreme sports circle. Crossing Tianmen Cave not only created a pioneering work in the world of wingsuit flying, but Jeb Chris also became the first person to bring wingsuit flying to China.
It was also after that that domestic players began to pay attention to this sport and began to explore the field of wingsuit flying.
So the next year, the scenic spot held the first global top event in the field of wingsuit flying, the first Red Bull Wingsuit Flying World Championship. The competition is hosted by the World Wingsuit League (WWL) and jointly organized by the Hunan Provincial Sports Bureau and the Zhangjiajie Municipal People's Government.
Jeb Criss in wingsuit
This event represents the highest level of the sport and will also create the first ever human unpowered flight speed world record certified by an authoritative organization.
At that time, 16 top wingsuit flight athletes from 10 countries were attracted to participate. The contestants took off from a cliff 700 meters above the ground, followed a prescribed flight route of about 1.2 kilometers in the valley, and finally landed on the road at the bottom of Tianmen Mountain. point. In the first competition, South African Julian Buller won the championship with a time of 23.41 seconds.
Tianmen Mountain holds wingsuit flying-related activities every year
In 2016, the fifth competition, Zhang Shupeng, as the only Chinese competitor, competed with 16 international wingsuit flying masters. He observed the 2012 event on-site and became associated with wingsuit flying. After four years of hard work, he finally reached the finals after selection.
Zhang Shupeng performs wingsuit flight in Tianmen Mountain Scenic Area
Compared with the first competition format, the difficulty and risk of this competition have been upgraded: contestants have to jump from a cliff about 1,400 meters above sea level and perform a steep turn in the forest canyon of Tianmen Mountain at a speed of more than 190 kilometers per hour.
There was always a layer of clouds and fog in the canyon that day, and the visibility was not very high. Zhang Shupeng, who participated in this competition for the first time, made history. He soared over the mountains for 35 seconds before landing steadily. Although he was lagging behind the champion, Vincent Desque of France, with 32.848 seconds, he still ranked eighth. With his achievements, he became the first Chinese person to enter the international hall of this sport.
Zhang Shupeng glides along the competition route at the Tianmen Mountain Wingsuit World Championships
Since then, in the first Red Bull Wingsuit Flying World Championships in 2017 and 2018, Zhang Shupeng has achieved the top three results in the target penetration competition.
It can be said that in the past ten years, Tianmen Mountain Scenic Area has witnessed the birth of the highest level of wingsuit flying in the world. It is one of the few main arenas in China for the world's top extreme sports. What it brings to the Chinese people is not only a shock to the eyes, but also a cutting-edge understanding of human beings in extreme exploration.
