Lust for life in the face of death
It is adventure athlete Damien Rider’s most extreme stunt yet – a deathdefying climb, unattached and unassisted, up a rope ladder to the top of a hot-air balloon and awaiting parachute ... 10,000 feet above the earth
DAMIEN Rider is 10,000 feet above the earth, hanging upside down from a sketchy rope ladder he rigged up on his living room floor. The Gold Coast extreme athlete climbs one rung at a time, unassisted and unattached, to the top of a hot-air balloon. A parachute awaits on a tiny platform.
But before he straps on his chute to jump, he will “nearly pass out” and “dry-retch” from a burst of hot propane gas spewing from the balloon like a geyser.
The balloon is moving at 30km/h, sideways and upwards, as below-freezing temperatures and fierce winds whip the extreme athlete’s body all over.
At these heights, clinging on for dear life over Bathurst, Rider is not in some lotus-like meditative state, nor is he afraid of certain death if he falls.
He’s humming the Hunters and Collectors’ hit Throw Your Arms Around Me as he tackles a stunt no man has ever attempted.
Why? To “change the world”.
Rider, a lifelong crusader to prevent children suffering the trauma and abuse he did, has taken on one extreme challenge after another as a way to raise both money and awareness.
He tells the Bulletin he “doesn’t give a s**t about money or fame” and tackles out-of-thisworld tasks like this as a way to “keep himself in check just as much as helping others”.
Rider, 46, is a firm believer that 99 per cent of therapy and mental health counselling is “total bulls**t”.
It is controversial, but Rider, who suffered abuse so bad a leading psychologist described it as “among the worst cases that I have come across in almost 40 years of practice”, has risen above it all, and says “life isn’t limitless but it can be lived without boundaries”.
Some horrific examples of Rider’s abuse included numerous childhood bashings at the hand of his mother’s boyfriend and sleeping in rock caves at the beach – all to avoid the fear of returning home.
In his book, ‘Running on Empty’, he says: “A switch would go off in his (mother’s boyfriend’s) head. The next thing I knew, I was getting dragged by a foot and smashed against a wall. He’d get drunk and attack my mother, absolutely beat the s**t out of her and throw her against the wall. Her face was often black and blue, split open. He’d rape her and then turn on us if we tried to help her out.” Rider wrote he would then hear the man “laughing”.
Another occasion was when his “violent alcoholic” grandmother would make Rider, only a small child at the time, catch flaming chestnuts from an open fire as they spat out and burned his hands. If he didn’t catch them, he would be “dragged and smashed on the concrete floor” by the woman.
And it’s these terrible experiences from years gone by that fuel his drive today to wring every last drop out of an extraordinary life. Although, he hates to be called an “adrenaline junkie”, “daredevil” or “assumed to have a death wish”.
Rider trains meticulously for his challenges, which have included running a marathon with a mattress on his back, skateboarding across the entire Route 66 in the US and paddling 800km from the Gold Coast to Bondi while facing sharks, swells and wild weather.
He says he factors “every little detail” into preparation and will “absolutely live in the zone” months in advance.
Rider says his latest hot-air balloon climb challenge is a “significant step-up” from the last big test, in which he rode atop a balloon while meditating and jumping off with a parachute.
And it had his close circle of friends “gravely concerned”. “They were 100 per cent convinced it would be impossible and that I was going to die,” he says.
THE CLIMB
Rider says climbing to the top of a hot-air balloon at 10,000 feet is “something you really can’t train for”, given oxygen diminishes by at least 30 per cent. He says the stunt required “deep visualisation” and physical strengthening exercises such as cable pulldowns and “hours upon hours” on the bike.
“I turned my apartment into a specialised gym and did plenty of cable and rope work as well as squats and work on the bike.
“I’m in no way a rock climber either so I had to work on my grip and practice at the Burleigh rock climbing gym.”
Rider says “good breath work” was 90 per cent of the challenge and he continued to hone his “slow, controlled breathing”, something the athlete has been doing “since I was six”. He says the key to successfully executing any challenge is to “separate emotions from breathing”.
The 42-metre ladder suspended from the top of the hot-air balloon wasn’t something you could buy, Rider says, so he decided to rig up a crude version on his living room floor.
“Even the balloon pilot said before take off, ‘do you really want to do this?’
“I had to laugh it off and replied: ‘There’s only one way to find out’.”
They were 100 per cent convinced it would be impossible and that I was going to die.
However, despite his confidence, Rider admits there were hurdles in his training.
After one particularly gruelling session, he says his “arms blew up like Popeye” and his “whole body was straining.”
“I thought I had done enough training but knew instantly I had more to do if I was going to make this challenge. It was a slap in the face and a reality check.”
Interestingly, Rider says he doesn’t get paid a cent to do any of his superhuman challenges.
“Even if it costs me money I get to share something incredible with other people. It’s never a money-driven pursuit. It’s all about living for these experiences.”
During the rope ladder climb, Rider was “struggling to breathe” at about 6500 feet.
“It took a few metres to get my rhythm but I just kept visualising one rung after another.”
He was suspended, teetering between upside down and horizontal, for 21 metres of the climb.
“I felt like celebrating once that part was over, but knew it was too early.”
He says he let out a gigantic celebratory “wooooo” as he reached the top and took the whole world below into his view.
“I had unbelievable lactic acid burn and felt a stream of hot propane fumes hit me in the face. “I felt like passing out as I dry-retched from the hot gas but I was still screaming in victory.”
At that moment Rider says he felt “a huge wave of gratitude” for everything he had achieved and was “comfortable with the fact that no trophy would be given”.
Once he meditated for a moment, he strapped on his chute and “uncontrollably slid off the balloon” for 50 feet until he was flung over the side. Rider says he was laughing the whole way down to the edge as he prepared to parachute the 10,000 feet toward the ground.
MENTAL HEALTH
Rider, who has hosted Ted talks and mental health events, as well as writing the memoir Running on Empty, says he “despises” traditional mental health therapy, and despite receiving professional advice admits: “I’ve tried to commit suicide four times”.
Today, Rider says he has “zero negative emotional attachment” to his past and “the worst thing about mental health trauma is noone knows what the f**k they are talking about”.
“If a therapist can’t fix you in five sessions, they are no good,” he said. “People can’t change what has happened in their past, but they can change how they look at it.”
Rider says too many people “live with tunnel vision to an isolated incident, rather than looking at it from behind, from all sides and looking to what is in front of them”.
The biggest problem, he says, is that many people have a tendency to feed the negative.
“I like to flip things around. I think of everything I’ve learned. I’ve opened up to my surroundings and live by the saying that impossible is not a thing – everything is possible.
“We’re always going to go through s**t in our life so it’s odd that when something happens, we act like it’s the first time it has ever happened.”
Rider attributes mental health issues to “not being active in daily life” and says as soon as people stop living “unhealthy, daily habits”, they can thrive: “I’ve been lied to a lot, all sorts of crap about trauma. My advice is to question everything.”
Rider says he’ll continue to push boundaries and has six extreme events on the cards: “The last eight years was just a warm-up,” he laughs.
Rider is the 2015 Men’s Health Man of the Year, and has been instrumental in creating child abuse awareness events across the globe. In 2018, he was keynote speaker for the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Sexual Child Abuse for Australia.