11 years ago
A report and interview by Karina Gomez:
Max Marien was born in beautiful San Diego, California in 1988. Living in Southern California, he quickly learned to surf, snowboard and paraglide. He has been paragliding since he was 12 (half of his life) and works at Torrey Pines Gliderport as a flight instructor. He works with students and does tandems for a living. Needless to say, he loves his job.
He has always loved doing Acro and has been doing SIV Clinics over lake Isabella ever since he started paragliding. He quickly learned what his passion was and got an Independence Stairway to Heaven, he then moved up to a Twister then an FLX2 and most recently the 2010 U-Turn Thriller and his newest, the Thriller 2k12 (18 meter).
I remember being at Torrey Pines a few years ago and having everyone gather and watch Horacio Lorens on youtube doing 281 tumbles. We could not believe anyone could do so many infinite tumbles. It was unbelievable! We never thought Max was going to be attempting this a few years later.
When ever he has a chance he likes to travel and fly different sites. We took a trip to Oludeniz in October of 2011, where he got to enjoy one of the best places for acro in the world, with no towing necessary. He was curious to see how many infinite tumbles he could do and achieved 69! We were all shocked and amazed at this number.
His father, Robin, is a friend of Corporate Helicopters in San Diego. One day, he was bragging to the owner, Ivor Shier about Max. Ivor was so impressed by the story of the 69 tumbles that he offered to take Max up in one of his helicopters.
The opportunity gave Max the motivation to attempt to break the world record. He was excited and began training for the event. He attended an SIV clinic where he practiced infinite tumbles on his brand new wing and even did a roll over out of a hot air balloon the week before the big event.
The helicopter was new to Max, he had never been inside one before. They took off from Montgomery field and flew to Torrey Pines Gliderport. They landed and Max attached the d-bag to where the seat belt anchors. With many cheers and good luck wishes they took off. Miles, the pilot, was able to get Max to 16,099 feet above the ocean. Max was a bit nervous, he had never packed the d-bag on his own before and was afraid the lines would break upon opening. After a thumbs up to the pilot, he jumped out at 50 knots and had a beautiful opening (he was using a justacro d-bag).
He first started trying to build rhythmic on the right, but because of the thin air, it was proving difficult. Instead he exited rhythmic into a spiral and went into tumbling to the left. He continued to do tumbles until about 2500 feet when he stopped, because he needed to have the altitude to be able to glide back to shore.
He landed safely on the beach and everyone there cheered him on. His mom was happy to see him land safely. Here is a brief interview about the feelings he had and questions he was asked by his fellow pilots.
Did you get dizzy?
"No, but I did get a bit disoriented."
Did you count the tumbles as you were doing them?
"No, just tumbled until I was out of altitude. I was hoping it would be enough, and I guess it was."
When did you find out how many tumbles you did?
"After I landed, the people that were counting told me around 370. At first I did not believe them, but after reviewing the footage from my gopro, we counted 374."
How did you feel when you found out you had done so many?
"I was happy, but I was hoping I had not broken the record so that I could jump out of the helicopter again, that was so much fun! I also felt a bit sore on my neck, arms and back."
What are your plans now?
"I would like to travel and hopefully enter in some acro competitions."
What about the record? Are you going to try to break it again soon?
"I think if I was better prepared, and had more training and altitude I could have broken 400. I wish I could get more practice."
Max would like to thank Corporate Helicopters for the ride, his dad Robin Marien and Jeremy Bishop for arranging the jump, the FAA for allowing it to happen and his girlfriend Karina for helping, supporting and always cheering him on.