Pensioner takes on ‘airgasmic’ missions to raise funds for friend
When thrill-seeking pensioner Jackie Smith wanted to raise money for charity she decided against the usual route of sponsored walks and bring and buy sales.
Instead she committed herself to something far more exciting – a day of whiteknuckle high octane extreme sports.
Adrenaline-junkie Smith, 69, began the day by climbing 25 metres above revellers on Brighton beach to fly down a 300 metre zip wire – but this was just the warm up. That afternoon she took things up a notch by spending her afternoon speeding around the track at Goodwood at 120mph and taking control of a stunt plane to loop the loop and barrel roll through the clouds.
“I wanted to raise money for my friend who has a rare progressive muscle wasting diseasecalledLMNACongenital Muscular Dystrophy,” said Smith. “So this seemed like the most logical thing to do.”
Throughout her life Smith, who lives near Salisbury Plain, has been no stranger to thrills and spills, having joined the British Army Parachute Regiment’s Freefall Team, the Red Devils, in 1971 at the age of 19.
Since then she has made an estimated 5,000 parachute jumps touching down everywhere from Yosemite National Park in California to Copacabana Beach in Rio De Janiro.
Across seven decades of startling achievements Smith won numerous national championships, becoming Ladies Style Champion six times, Overall Team Champion twice and represented her country at seven World Championships.
She even has her name in the Guinness Book of Records after she became the very first person in the world – male or female – to score ten consecutive dead centres, as she won gold for Great Britain at the 1978 World Championships in Zagreb. As if this wasn’t enough she would go on to be nominated for BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in 1979 and became the first female to be awarded the Red Devils’s prestigious red beret.
When taking on her charity challenges Smith unsurprisingly showed no fear, screaming with delight as she reached up to 5 G’s in the plane. Upon landing she described the experience as ‘Amazeballs’ and told onlookers that the aerobatics was the greatest thrill she had ever had and that it had given her an ‘airgasm’. This is one pensioner who is not going quietly into old age.
If you would like to help with Jackie’s fundraising then you can donate at www. justgiving.com/campaign/ CarmelasFighttoStayMobile