Europe’s first indoor Freestyle hall at the Laax base station is the new base of the Freestyle Academy. Jumps and tricks can be practised all year round. Besides trampolines and skateramps, the core of Europe’s first indoor training hall is a kicker facility for snowboards, skis and bikes. You’ll land in a large foampit.

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, pictured during a 25,000ft altitude test jump for Red Bull Stratos. He is renowned for the particularly dangerous nature of the stunts he has performed during his career. Baumgartner spent time in the Austrian military where he practiced parachute jumping, including training to land on small target zones.

High wire artist Freddy Nock balances as he walks up on the rope of a Feuerkogel cable car in Ebensee. He is attempting to set a new world record by doing seven summits in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in seven days.

This is the adrenaline-pumping moment surfer Fergal Smith catches a tube completely unaware he is sharing the wave with a Great White shark. The holidaymaker only realized his close encounter when photographer Phil Gallagher showed him the photo of the shark lurking under the water in front of Mr. Smith’s surfboard.

After strapping the canadian ripper, Sebastien Toutant, with a head cam TTR sits down to talk about his current favorite trick: the backside 10 double cork.  He talks about how it feels to throw the back 10 double and walks us through how he executes the trick in the air. Not only that but its filmed with a head cam and in slow-mo, so you can really get a feel for it yourselves. This kid has the back 10 double on lock and goes as far as saying “now it’s like doing a Cab 9 for me, it’s easy.”  No big deal.

Danny MacAskill grew up on the Isle of Skye where he says he had a reckless amount of freedom growing up. He got into trials biking around the age of 11 and has been progressing ever since. At the age of 17 he moved to Aviemore to work in a bike shop called Bothy Bikes and around four years ago Danny hooked up with Inspired Bike, which allowed him to ride as much as possible.

Speed flying is a form of paragliding, which is operated primarily in the winter. Gliders are used with very small area and corresponding greater speed. The screens have an area 8 to 14 square feet and reach 60 to 120 km/h.

This is Burton Air 5.1 snowboard. Jeff Brushie won the 1991 men’s halfpipe champs on this board. Looking at his floaty air to fakies it’s not hard to see why. This years Air came with a new shape, which included a ‘full freestyle nose and tail’. They increased the edge contact length and added a quadratic sidecut to make climbing bigger pipe walls easier. Rider Response Flex was introduced along with the concept of pressure distribution. Up till this point the flex of a snowboard was much like a ski.

John Rodney Mullen, known simply as Rodney Mullen, is a professional freestyle and street skateboarder. He is considered by many to be the best skater in the history of skateboarding. Mullen is credited with inventing the flatground ollie, the kickflip in 1983, the heelflip, the impossible, and a long list of other original tricks. Mullen is credited in numerous skateboarding videos, and has authored an autobiography entitled The Mutt: How to Skateboard and not Kill Yourself.

View the award-winning TV commercial showing how a group of smart young “engineers-to-be” manage to turn a speeding train into a rollercoaster.

See also Taken For A Ride