Instead of jumping off something tall, two professional BASE jumpers let a machine launch them straight up it. On November 5, inside a decommissioned Slovenian power plant chimney, the stunt earned them two Guinness World Records in a single afternoon.

  • 60 metres — height of the custom catapult built inside the chimney
  • 180 km/h — top speed reached during the solo launch, in just 2.15 seconds
  • 151.72 metres — combined height of the pair's simultaneous launch
  • 2.5 years spent engineering the device before it ever launched a person

Building a machine to launch a human

The location was the former Trbovlje Power Station in Trbovlje, Slovenia, home to one of Europe's tallest industrial chimneys. Engineers from Slovenian stunt collective DD Squad spent two and a half years designing a vertical catapult capable of safely accelerating a human body fast enough to clear the top of the 360-metre structure.

Spanish wingsuit pilot Dani Román, 35, went first — alone. The catapult took him from a standstill to 180 km/h in 2.15 seconds, subjecting him to roughly 4.2 G of force before releasing him 100.36 metres above the launch point. That single jump secured the first of the day's two Guinness World Records: greatest height achieved by a human catapult.

The record that needed two people

French BASE jumper Fred Fugen, 47, had his own launch queued up next, but the bigger record came when both men were fired simultaneously. Travelling at 145 km/h and reaching the top of their trajectory in 2.66 seconds, Román and Fugen combined for a total height of 151.72 metres — Román contributing 75.97 metres and Fugen 75.75 metres.

Both men transitioned from the upward force of the launch directly into freefall before deploying their parachutes, turning a one-way mechanical catapult shot into a standard BASE jump descent.

That combined number earned the second Guinness World Record of the day: greatest combined height achieved by a human catapult.

Why a chimney, and why now

Industrial structures have become an increasingly common stage for extreme sports records once traditional cliffs and buildings have already been used. A disused power station chimney offered engineers something cliffs don't: a confined, controllable vertical shaft where a custom-built catapult could be installed and tested repeatedly without weather or rock-face variables.

The project was backed by Red Bull and fashion label Prada Linea Rossa, continuing a long pattern of extreme-sports brands funding record attempts that double as marketing spectacles. For Román and Fugen, both established names in wingsuit and BASE jumping circles, the stunt adds a mechanically engineered first to résumés already built on jumping off natural and man-made structures around the world.

Guinness World Records has not yet published its own verification page for the double record, but full details of the jump, including speed and force data, were reported by Euronews. Guinness World Records' official site, which maintains the category, is at guinnessworldrecords.com.

Cover photo shows BASE jumpers at Kjerag, Norway, illustrating the sport generally — not the Slovenia catapult stunt described above.