Where do you draw the line between “sports” and “extreme sports”? Is it when the sport is “risky”? Nah – that explains pretty much any sport worth playing. Is it when the sport involves free-falling thousands of feet? That’s getting closer to the mark. Is it when the sport involves going at speeds over 100 miles per hour with no engine, wheels, or other mechanical devices? You’re probably in the “extreme” ballpark then.

That said: when you’re straight-up batshit crazy for extreme, then you’re ready take up wingsuit flying. This crazy-ass sport takes makes skydiving look like bungee-jumping (and bungee-jumping look like riding a pogo stick). In wingsuit flying, you wear a special wingsuit which has fabric sewn between the legs and under the arms to create an airfoil which actually creates lift. The end result is greater control while flying (or “falling” as some might call it) and more horizontal movement.

The results are truly insane (see the video to the right for examples). Typical BASE jumps are finished in seconds – with wingsuits you can fly for minutes which feel like an eternity. You can do barrel rolls, swoops, and flips. And the lunatics in Norway are going for extra thrills by flying within feet of the cliff walls that they jump off of.

Naturally if you’re putting your life on the line like this, you have to have the best equipment possible, and these come from Phoenix Fly. Founded by Robert Pecnik, longtime skydiver and designer of the first commercial wingsuit, Phoenix Fly represents the most state-of-the-art in wingsuit manufacturing. They offer a variety of wingsuits, from beginner models up to the most advanced suits available, including the Vampire (a high-performance suit which is the weapon of choice for BASE jumpers) and the Stealth (a brand-new design aimed at slow freefall speeds and maximum range). Each suit is tailor-made to your personal body shape, resulting in an outfit that maximizes comfort and performance.

Bear in mind you’re going to need at least 200 regular skydiving jumps before you can begin instruction on wingsuit flying (or 500 if you’re cocky enough that you figure you can just teach yourself). But if you’ve got the sack to go wingsuit flying, you probably won’t mind a couple hundred free-falls beforehand.

And then you can chuckle to yourself as you blow past the line between “sport” and “extreme sport” at a hundred miles an hour.

This post is tagged base jumping, extreme sports, in luxury living, phoenix fly, skydiving, wingsuit, wingsuit flying