Stretching the Limits

Bungy pioneer AJ Hackett is to mark the 20th anniversary of his historic Eiffel Tower jump with a new world record attempt. In Kuala Lumpur later this year, the 48-year-old will leap from a helicopter attached to a cord capable of stretching 1.5km – nearly double the previous record of 700m. “Last December we opened the world’s highest site in Macau. There we developed this new technology which is a tapered bungy cord, which is fatter at the top than it is at the bottom. It means you can stretch them a long, long way,” he told Australia’s ABC Radio. “We’ve had to get this technology happening to enable us to do some seriously big jumps we wanted to do – somewhere between one and two kilometre stretches.” Hackett is currently in Australia promoting his new biography, Jump Start.