Quirky News
Rollerman braves 99 hairpin bends
A French daredevil mastered a mountain road featuring 99 hairpin turns on a custom-made roller suit with 31 wheels.
Jean-Yves Blondeau, 42, who calls himself Rollerman, completed the stunt on Tianmen Mountain in Zhangjiajie, in south China's Hunan province.
The suit, which he designed, features rollerblade-like wheels on the torso, back, and most of the major joints, allowing him to ride in a number of positions at speeds of up to 70mph.
Mr Blondeau sped down the 10.77 kilometre road in just 19 mins 34 sec - giving him an average speed of about 20mph, reports the Daily Mail.
Rolling part-way down the steep, tortuous mountain road, and part way down a specially installed metal track, he used his body to steer as he hurtled dangerously towards the finish.
He even felt confident enough to catch a little air from a jump set up near the bottom of the track, before crossing the finish line to exploding fireworks.
Mr Blondeau originally designed his roller suit as his graduation project at an industrial design school in Paris.
Since then, he has created 20 generations of the superhero-type outfit, ranging from basic kneepads with rollers to sophisticated full body armour like the one worn in the Tianmen Mountain stunt.
Adrian Wagstaff
1:13pm on 23/7/2012
All he'll get from doing that is a permanently sore neck like an astronomer or aircraft spotter. This story makes me wonder why he went all the way to China to do that on their roads instead of French ones. Considering the amount of money European countries get from the EEC you'd expect French roads to be paved with gold. China is so big, how can they possibly keep paving all those roads? Now I think of it, it must be really difficult to re-tarmac all the roads on all the biggest countries on Earth. America, Australia, Russia? I remember French roads being in a very excellent condition. I don't understand why he went all the way to China to do this. Why didn't he go to French mountains?
chris
8:57pm on 23/7/2012
probably thats where all the developement , parts and making up goes on?