Jaan Roose, 32, has previously made sporting history as the only athlete ever to complete a double backflip on a slackline. Sicilians have been waiting for a bridge between the island and the Italian mainland for years, sick of using ferries to cross the Strait. But, now, one man has found a novel new way of making the crossing: on foot.
Yes, really. Estonian slackline athlete Jaan Roose made history on Wednesday (10 July) as the first person to walk across Italy’s Strait of Messina. The slackline he used for the daring feat was the longest ever constructed - measuring 3,646 metres, more than 3.
5 kilometres. Roose managed to complete the treacherous journey in just under three hours, technically beating the existing Guinness World Record distance of 2,710 metres. Sadly for him, though, a fall in the final 80 metres prevented him from officially setting a new World Record.
On Wednesday, in the mainland city of Villa San Giovanni, Roose ascended to the anchor point on Santa Trada, a 265-metre tower that surpasses the height of Italy’s tallest skyscraper. Stepping onto his , a strip of webbed fabric measuring only a terrifying 1.9 cm wide, he began his journey.
The entire trip was a distance of longer than 30 football fields. At its lowest stretch, the slackline was 100 metres above the water. In the final stage, Roose ascended 130 metres in elevation to the endpoint on Sicily’s Torre Faro tower, which he reached 2 hours and 57 minutes after he began the mission.
Using ext.