The Citizen (KZN)

Extreme sports tame in comparison

- Niagara Falls

10 Who will captain the Proteas’ women’s team at the upcoming World Cup? No beating around the bush Former champion Rory McIlroy was not amused with the decision to trim back the fescue at Erin Hills, this venue for this week’s US Open. This was his message to his fellow profession­als. Choke’s on Proteas After their feeble surrender against India at the The Oval last Sunday, jokes about choking have been rife this week. Here is one that did the round on social media.

– American daredevil Erendira Wallenda dangled from her teeth from under a helicopter in a series of eye-watering acrobatic moves over the teeming waters of Niagara Falls on Thursday.

US media said her stunt set a Guinness World Record for height, breaking a record establishe­d by her husband Nik when hanging from his teeth 76 metres above Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.

Dressed in a black body suit, the mother-of-three sat and dangled from a large hoop tethered to the bottom of the helicopter, at one point hooking her feet over the hoop and hanging upside down with her arms outstretch­ed towards the water.

Wallenda hung above the falls for around seven or eight minutes.

She did splits hanging off the hoop backwards, before biting into an iron jaw and briefly dangling by her teeth about 300 feet in the air.

Wallenda comes from a family of stunt artists and world record chasers.

Thursday’s stunt marked the fifth anniversar­y of her husband’s walk on a tightrope over Niagara Falls, which straddle the border between Canada and the United States.

In June 2013, Nik Wallenda became the first man to cross the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, completing that record-breaking feat in under 23 minutes. – AFP

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