The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Bungee cures heights fear
Aman who spent his childhood afraid of heights will tomorrow try to set a new world record for most bungee jumps completed in 24 hours.
Francois-Marie Dibon, 44, struggled to dive from the side of the swimming pool as a child.
But tomorrow, the Frenchman will head to Killiecrankie in Perthshire, and repeatedly plummet 40 metres from Garry Bridge in a bid to break the record 430 jumps in one day, set in 2017 by Mike Heard of New Zealand.
A Guinness Book of Records adjudicator from London will be on hand, with Francois and his team of jump masters, operating in four-hour shifts.
The Paris-raised professional, an actuary in employee benefits in Stockholm, will jump through the night, taking small rest breaks and micro-napping; something he has taught himself to do.
It will be the culmination of years of planning, with their preparations also interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Francois said: “We have been thinking about this for the last five-and-a-half years, with ups and downs and some road-blocks on the way.
“It takes a lot of trained staff to do something like this. Then the pandemic happened and the travel restrictions made it difficult for me to travel from Sweden to Scotland.
“Now the karma is good. The stars are aligned.”
He added: “I am just the jumper of the team, it is a collective sport. Without me there is no record, without the team I will do only one jump!
“It takes an amazing team over this very long effort. In 24 hours you only have 1,440 minutes, it might seem a lot but when you are under time pressure, every second we lose, if you multiply that by hundreds, you are losing time. Everyone’s role is so important.”
Francois did his first bungee jump in September 2010 as a mental re-set after the demands of combining work and exams.
He didn’t tell anyone because he was aware of his crippling personal fears and didn’t know if he would manage to leave the platform.
Since then he has developed a deep passion for the sport – but his mission has seen bumps on the way.
As late suffering as March, he was the equivalent of sea-sickness due to the constant motion of going up and down on the elasticated bungee cord.
“Like most people I don’t like pain and I don’t like fear but I like the idea of facing your fears and trying to overcome them,” he said.
“For one whole week after my first jump my body ached because I was so stressed but I realised, then, that this was good for me.”
Garry Bridge is operated by The Highland Fling Bungee team, who have made technical adjustments to their winched retrieval system to accommodate the bid.
Laurie Thomas, jump master and operations manager, said: “It is great to be part of this with him, and the team will have this on their CVs forever.
“Hopefully we are celebrating success.”