Stuntman breaks record for bike jump – twice

AN American motorcycle stuntman twice broke the world record for the longest distance jumped on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle yesterday, sailing through the air near Sydney Harbour to shatter the 10-year-old record.

Seth Enslow flew to a distance of 56 metres (183.7 feet) on his Harley-Davidson XR1200 shortly after a 53.34m jump.

The cameras were not ready for the astonishing first attempt so Enslow waited for the thumbs up and returned to the ramp for a second shot.

This time he smashed his own new record.

Bubba Blackwell set the previous record with a 47.85m jump in Las Vegas in 1999.

“This is awesome. I’m stoked!” Enslow said after entering the record books.

“I might have broke the record but I think I broke my nut too,” Enslow said after the jump.

Enslow appeared to be in pain after the jump, but members of his stunt team said he was fine.

The heavily tattooed Enslow, a star of the Crusty Demons motorbike troupe, held his crotch and grimaced after landing “awkwardly” on the second jump.

“I think it’s just the way he landed but it’s nothing too drastic, as far as I’m aware,” a spokesperson said.

“We’ve worked hard at creating history and we’re all glad he landed it safely,” Harley-Davidson spokesman Adrian O’Donoghue said.

It had taken his team 12 months to prepare the ramp for the stunt.

“Lots of hard work putting this ramp together the last few days… the weather has been testing us but we made it happen… so accomplished the job we set out to do,” he said.

Enslow’s jump is not a Guinness World Record as Guinness has no category for specific motorcycles, but it still stands as a world record.

Enslow had previously tried to break the record in 1999 on a custom built Honda bike, but failed and injured himself.

The record was once held by legendary US stuntman Evel Knievel, who cleared 14 buses on a Harley XR-750 at King’s Island, Ohio in 1975, just a few months after famously crashing at London’s Wembley Stadium.