World’s first Ride & Fly with Tom Pagès
FMX legend Tom Pagès has just released his Ride & Fly video, shot in the Alps, where he takes his Yamaha on a speedriding flight, reaching speeds of 28 mph flying over the sensational terrain.
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It’s a world first that follows in the footsteps of his previous aerial feat, Flight Mode, in which the freestyle expert parachuted his bike off a 135 m cliff.
For Flight Mode, the challenge was to open the parachute in time and land. Ride & Fly is even more technical, dreamed up by Tom Pagès and developed with his friend and fellow athlete Valentin Delluc, a French speedriding expert, Ride & Fly has taken over two years to complete, from developing the equipment to training Tom to ride it.
Tom Pagès
“It’s all about managing the acceleration to keep the speedriding wing inflated above your head. Then when I feel the wheels take off, I have to put on more throttle to reach 30 km/h. My 4-stroke bike weighs 105 kilos, so you have to lift it! … Because if you don’t get off the ground it’s hot!”
When in the air, Tom Pagès has to unhook his paraglider controls, which were previously attached to his elbows, and take them in his hands, letting go of the handlebars. “From then on, the flight is super cool, which wasn’t easy because at the beginning, I was really scared in the air. But now I’m fine, I’m shaving the grass, I’m flying through the trees, I’m having fun, I’m even forgetting that I’m on a motorbike”.
He glides along at more than 22 mph under a glider a third the size of a paraglider wing, and verges on 28 mph during tight turns close to the ground. In the event of a problem, he has three parachutes to free the bike.
For this project, Tom Pagès designed the sail suspension system himself, as well as the safety device – a handle with a ring system for release.
“I invested in a sewing machine and roughed out the material in my garage with the bike hanging from the ceiling to measure the lengths of webbing for the harness I was sewing. I also learnt to weave ropes, before sending the whole thing to Zun (Stéphane Zunino, one of the pioneers of skydiving), who fine-tuned the device, not forgetting the invaluable advice of Loïc Jean-Albert, a legendary parachutist who has flown on anything that exists.
“I’m coming into a sport where I’m starting from scratch. First of all, I took my microlight license to comply with aviation regulations by flying a powered aircraft. I did my first test flights with a paraglider on a training hill. Then, for the speedriding part, we spent many weeks preparing with Albert Baud. When you see the video, you think ‘yeah, easy’, but I almost stopped everything facing the complexity and risks of this hyper-stressful project! I was basically ready to go a month before the shoot.”
Albert Baud is a veteran of the discipline, having trained Tom Cruise for Mission Impossible. Once the basic training was complete, Tom trained with Ugo Gerola and Valentin Delluc, then did all the bike scouting with Pacôme Schmitt, who used his extensive knowledge of the area to help find the right terrain.
Tom Pagès has four consecutive victories at the Red Bull X-Fighters in Madrid, he is a winner of the 2013 X-Fighters World Tour, has five gold medals, two silver and one bronze at the X Games. The 39-year-old French athlete now further expanding his antics into new areas.
