I think it’s human nature to want to do stupid things. I mean, you could say that pretty much everything we do has some degree of stupidity to it. From an early age, kids want to challenge reality—climb and jump off trees, and see who can ride their bike fastest down a hill.
Well, the fact of the matter is that a lot of us never really grew up, and this is especially true when it comes to us motorcyclists. Nine times out of ten, a motorcyclist rides a motorcycle simply because they love riding. Naturally, this love for riding can take many shapes. Some folks just want to hop aboard their cruisers and putter around town. Others want to hit the dirt and explore the wilderness. Meanwhile, other riders prefer hitting the track and carving canyons.
But there’s a breed of rider that’s much rarer, one that doesn’t really think twice about doing stupid shit. In fact, some of the best riders in the business come from this breed, and they’re the best because they’ve managed to survive and get really, really good at doing crazy things aboard their motorcycles. I’m talking of the likes of Travis Pastrana, Pol Tarres, Aaron Colton, and the list goes on.
Now, the dude who’s the subject of our story isn’t any of these, but he sure has balls of steel to do what he just did. He appears to be a stunt rider and all around adrenaline junkie by the name of Nikolay Tsibulko, and browsing through this dude’s IG profile will show you reels of him doing all sorts of crazy, death-defying stunts, most of which involve some sort of base jump, as well as a bunch of dirt bike stunts.
Of course, you just know that base jumping and dirt biking will have to intersect for this dude. And indeed, he did just that. It’s a stunt that gained popularity thanks to Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning. In the movie, Ethan Hunt would ride a motorcycle off a cliff and parachute down a valley. Pretty epic on screen, and definitely even more epic once you found out Cruise actually did the stunt himself, and several times, at that.
Don’t believe me? Check out the video below:
It goes without saying something as epic as that would attract wannabe stuntmen to imitate the trick, and I’m sure Tsibulko was by no means the first to attempt to replicate the stunt, and I can certainly guarantee that he won’t be the last.
That said, Tsibulko’s attempt was by no means a success—but it could’ve been a whole lot worse.
To attempt the motorcycle base jump, Tsibulko needed two sets of parachutes. One obviously for him, and the other one for the motorcycle. After riding off the cliff, his parachute deployed successfully, and we see him gracefully make his way down the cliff. But as for the motorcycle, well, it seems that the parachute wasn’t strapped on properly, as we can immediately see the line snap and the bike plummet hundreds of feet to certain death.
Thankfully it was the bike’s parachute line that was severed, and not Tsibulko’s, as that would certainly have had a much more gruesome outcome.
At the end of it all, the stunt was still pretty damn epic, and I’m sure our hero over here didn’t really mind sacrificing his Honda CRF for the stunt.
Source: Nikolay Tsibulko via Instagram
