BASE jumpers celebrate Bridge Day

The annual Dodge West Virginia Bridge Day Festival has been celebrated in its usual heart-stopping style by extreme sports enthusiasts.

Around 450 contestants from around the world jumped solo or in pairs from the 876ft high (267m) bridge at the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville, West Virginia.

And some of the fearless few BASE jumpers stunned the 200,000 onlookers by doing back flips off a diving board from the Western Hemisphere's longest single steel arch bridge.

The BASE jumpers - a sport involving the use of a parachute to jump from fixed objects - spend just 8.8 seconds in the air before hitting the water below.

BASE is an acronym for the four types of fixed objects that are used for these foot-launched skydives - Building, Antenna (an uninhabited tower such as an aerial mast), Span (a bridge or arch) and Earth (a cliff or other natural formation).

Held on the third Saturday in October every year, the annual event has been running for 29 years. But last year, tragedy struck when one contestant was killed.

However, one jumper, Larry Lemaster, from South Point, Ohio, said that at least the jumper died doing what he loved doing.

He said: "Everybody knows the dangers involved with it and we all accept the responsibilities of it. But you know, he died doing something he really enjoyed doing, so you know, it's really not a bad way to go if you really enjoy what you are doing."

One novice jumper, Kristen Kelsy, from Birmingham, Michigan, said she opened her parachute very quickly.

"When I first came off I was supposed to have a delay and my first reaction was just open this parachute now."

© Independent Television News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

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