Bruce Lee first fights Ted Wong, one of his top students. He then fights Taky Kimura. It will come as no surprise that Bruce easily wins each match. You won’t be able to readily identify either fighter from their likeness because California State regulations prevented fighting without protective gear. However, is easy to discern Lee from his controlled movement and composed demeanor. Lee’s legendary speed and precision are on full display. He remains calm and cool as his opponents nervously jump around, keeping them at bay by repeatedly countering their attacks with a series of lightning-quick blows.
This past Saturday Luke Aikins became the first person to accomplish a planned freefall (and landing) out of a plane without a parachute or wingsuit from an altitude of 25,000 feet. Aikins fell for about two minutes above the California desert, appearing to soar effortlessly, arms extended, face downward. And as he neared the ground, with a mere second to go, he expertly flipped onto his back and landed in the 100-square-foot net without incident.
The jump was aired live on television during an hour-long special. I remember when I was a child Evil Knievel did a bunch of the publicized live stunts – it that time to return once more?
After much deliberation, with doctors doubtful of my recovery, I engaged in medieval ways to break apart the bone fusion – hammering the end of screwdrivers into my flesh, climbing into the wheel well of my car to apply leverage while pulling on the car’s frame. After thousands of hours, over years of doing this, I began breaking those dried-gum-like strands of fascia. I would often become overwhelmed, screaming violently in pain, panic-stricken that I was doing more damage than good and I would never be able to skate again. Until one night, hanging from my car, I heard a thump. And when I got up, I realized that I had broken the calcification and my hip-joint was mobile again.
What makes this all more amazing is that since his hip-popping breakthrough in 2010, Rodney Mullen has had to relearn to skateboard with his opposite foot forward. This was not simply to learn how to skate switch, which is common. To skate without re-injuring his hip, it was crucial that he once again train his body the tricks he came up with more than three decades ago, as well as any new ones, with his right foot forward. Mullen has reversed his native stance and is now more adept at skating with his right foot forward as he was with his left. He has found bona fide goofy-footedness – an idea he calls stancelessness.
“This trick has never been seen or done, as far as I know. It is rooted in an obscure freestyle trick dating back 30 years. However, it was only done landing on all four wheels. This rail-to-rail version requires another level of power and control. On top of that, to do it on a modern (bigger) board, and landing on axles, is so daunting that I had never done it until now. It was particularly inspired by the camera action, because of how beautiful it would look: a rotary motion in a rotary system.â€
More detailed descriptions of Rodney’s tricks, and the technology used to create the film, can be found on the film maker Steven Sebring’s website.
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains — Thomas Carlyle.
Surfing Magazine has released this spellbinding drone footage of surfers charging the infamous Teahupo’o wave break in Tahiti. The footage provides a new beautiful perspective of this powerful surf spot.
The name ‘Teahupo’o’ loosely translates to English as “to sever the head†and is regarded as one of the most challenging surf breaks in the world. The wipeout 3:17 minutes into the video helps explain why. The drone piloting at the 3:30 mark, when the camera films two waves in a single sequence, is incredible. And to top it all off I’m pretty sure the surfer at 3:53 is lit on fire!
After months of trial and error, yesterday Jed Mildon landed the world’s first quadruple BMX backflip. The jump ended a heated, year-long, race between Mildon and James Foster to see who could land the trick first.
Outside a couple of K.O.s in the airbag during initial attempts, Jed Mildon pulled the trick off without injury, which is an especially monumental feat considering James Foster broke ten ribs and suffered a separated shoulder while training for his attempt. You can watch the official Nitro Circus video here.
Forty five year old Garrett doesn’t seem too sure about the validation of the record because the wave never actually broke. It lurched, capped, feathered – and then backed off. It never fell forward. He is quoted as saying, “How do you measure a wave? I don’t know who measures ’em. I don’t know how. All I know is that I love surfing and I love sharing what we do and learning and experiencing new things. And a bunch of the waves ridden on Monday were bigger than the one I rode last November.”
Regardless of whether or not it’s a new record, the man is insane.
Teahupo’o is the name of a large reef break in Tahiti. Named after a village on the southwest coast of the island, the break is renowned for its consistent barrels, heavy waves and shallow shoreline. An extremely shallow coral reef, which ranges up to 20 inches beneath the water’s surface creates an unusual wave shape with an effect of almost breaking below sea level. The wave’s unique shape is due to the specific shape of the reef beneath the wave. Its semi circular nature, which drops down sharply creates a ‘below water’ effect and the extreme angles in descent create an instant instability to the wave.
The extreme angle creates instant instability in the wave. The second stage of the reef proceeds uniformly down to the 300 metres contour in about 50 metres of distance, or a ratio of about 1/6 (.1667). The maximum steepness a wave is able to endure before it breaks is .17. So when height (h) is > .17 of wavelength (λ) then the wave will break. The reef at Teahupoo moves the entire available energy mass of the wave all the way from 300m to the 10m mark of the first stage of the reef at the maximum angle permissible prior to a wave breaking. Then at 10m prior to reaching the surface it puts up a steep wall of reef that causes the entire mass to fold onto a scalloped semi-circle breaking arc.
The result is an incredible moving wall of water. The video below was taken August 27th 2011 during the Billabong Pro waiting period. The French Navy labeled this day a double code red prohibiting and threatening to arrest anyone that entered the water.
Watching these uncommon flat ground (street) skateboard tricks slowed down to 1,000 frames per second really highlights how difficult they are to execute. Watch through to the end to see all the tricks shown again at actual speed. Flabbergasting. The tricks performed in the order of appearance are:
Merlin Twist (Switch front foot impossible fs 180)
Nollie Heelflip Indy Grab
Early Grab Frontside 180 Fingerflip
Pressure Hardflip
Jovan flip
Backside Pop Shuv Underflip
Nollie Pressure Hardflip
It should be noted that since skateboarding trick names are defined by a common usage naming convention and these tricks are not very common, some of them don’t have well-established names so the creator of the video took some artistic license.
I’m a lover of sport. I also really enjoy the Olympics on several levels. But reading this “Welcome To Lockdown London” article in the Guardian makes me hope that the Olympics are never held in a place I live. Security has simply reached a point where it’s no longer comforting and, frankly, has become scary.
In addition to the concentration of sporting talent and global media, the London Olympics will host the biggest mobilisation of military and security forces seen in the UK since the second world war. More troops – around 13,500 – will be deployed than are currently at war in Afghanistan. The growing security force is being estimated at anything between 24,000 and 49,000 in total. Such is the secrecy that no one seems to know for sure.
During the Games an aircraft carrier will dock on the Thames. Surface-to-air missile systems will scan the skies. Unmanned drones, thankfully without lethal missiles, will loiter above the gleaming stadiums and opening and closing ceremonies. RAF Typhoon Eurofighters will fly from RAF Northolt. A thousand armed US diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80m, 5,000-volt electric fence.
It makes me proud that Denver was the first and only city to ever reject hosting an Olympiad after being selected. The movement against hosting the 1976 winter games was based largely on environmental and financial issues. I can only hope that Colorado’s vote in 1972 will prevent it from ever being the U.S. nominee as the host site. However, there are now talks of Denver exploring a potential bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
via Boing Boing (which is doing a great job of covering the craziness that has become the Games of the Summer XXX Olympiad).
