Skydiver sets record whilst plummeting towards Earth with dizzying backwards somersaults
Twirling through the air while plummeting towards the ground will sound like a nightmare to many people, but for Marc-Olivier Desmarais (Canada) it was a dream come true.
The seasoned skydiver performed the most backwards somersaults in a skydive – 36 of them - when he jumped from a plane 13,000 ft above St-Esprit, Quebec, Canada, on 14 September 2024.
He absolutely obliterated the previous record of 19 set by Harry Shimmin (UK) in 2017.
Marc-Olivier has been skydiving since he was 17 and he’s performed over 3,500 dives, either as an instructor or just for fun.
But this one holds a special place in his memory.
“I feel like breaking a record is something that you can differentiate yourself with,” he told us. “It’s very special and an experience that few people can have, and if you have the chance to do an attempt it can be very fulfilling.
“People will be very impressed but I do it for myself before anything. It’s a huge sense of achievement and something to be proud of.”
As he watched his record-breaking jump back, Marc-Olivier recalled how he was trying to keep count in his head while he was spinning through the air.
He managed up to around 18 before losing count, meaning he was pretty confident he had done enough, but he couldn’t be certain until his feet were on the ground and he could review the footage.
He said of his thought process during the attempt: “I just needed to focus everything I had on the next rotation and bringing my knees in.
“Since the record dictates I needed to open up between each rotation it was quite hard on the abdominals and core.
“If I stopped it would be too hard to start up again if I lost momentum so I needed to get just the right tempo.
“I gave everything I had up to that point.”
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Marc-Olivier says that by the time he decided to stop spinning, his altimeter was “screaming” for him to open his parachute.
“I knew this was going to be a fun jump and that allowed me to be present in the moment and not stress about the performance,” he said.
“It feels amazing holding a world record, it’s something we don’t think we can do and it’s very weird. It’s something to pass on to my kids and hopefully inspiration for other people to try and break a world record.”
Marc-Olivier originally got the idea to break a record at a Christmas party in 2023 when everyone played a game by writing down their goals for the following year before picking one out of the hat and trying to guess who had written each one.
“I didn’t know what to say so I wrote ‘I want to break a world record’ as a joke, and I did it,” he said.
While he’s very proud to have his record, Marc-Olivier says the skydiving community is so competitive that he doesn’t know if it will stand for a long time.
But he assured us: “I won’t let that happen to easily, so bring it on.”