If you can imagine it, it would seem that this guy can ride it. Scotland’s Kriss Kyle stuns the world of BMX with, in his own words, his hardest trick yet: A helicopter-drop onto the helipad of one of Dubai’s tallest skyscrapers (followed by another massive drop off of that helipad onto the platform below). Witness Kriss getting in amongst it on the streets, waterparks and skyscrapers of Dubai.
Kriss Kyle Exclusive Interview
BIKERUMOR: Kriss, thank you so much for giving us the chance to speak to you about your new edit. First of all, that send out of the helicopter was an absolutely incredible opening. How many shots did you get at that? Did you do it a few times at different heights or did you just go for it?
Kriss Kyle: I had one shot at it above the hotel, but tried a few jumps out of the helicopter on the ground. Our first attempt at the jump actually got canceled because of the weather one day as well, so that was really stressful. It meant I had to go back to bed that night and blooming think about it all night, so that was horrible! A lot of stress came with that one, just with wind, waiting on people filming at the right time. The morning of the jump I wanted to do a couple test jumps in the carpark, I attempted three jumps and my first jumps went terrible. It was just too windy and I didn’t land them. And then my third jump that I did, I landed it and it went all right, and I was just like, “I’m going, lets just go up for it and just get it done.”
BIKERUMOR: Whose idea was the helicopter jump? Was it yours or did someone else put it to you?
Kriss Kyle: It was my idea! When Red Bull and I were discussing a possible video we thought about going to Dubai and recording a normal street video, and I thought fair enough that’ll be brilliant. Then when we’re in Dubai on a recce and they were showing us all these amazing locations, I wondered how far we could push it and what we could get away with. Next thing you know we’re up on a helipad and they’re asking ‘Do you think you can do anything up here?’ and I was like ‘I don’t know, probably not, but I guess I could jump out of a helicopter and land on the roof’. They all kind of laughed it off thinking that would be amazing if you could actually make that happen. Then two weeks after flying home, I got an email saying, it’s on! So I’ve literally spent a whole year sweating that helicopter jump, thinking what have I gotten myself into, as I’m actually scared of heights, they terrify me!
BIKERUMOR: I think everyone reading this will be thinking, “I want to ride down a water slide!” That must have been a tricky one to film. How exactly was it done?
Kriss Kyle: It’s been a dream of mine to ride a waterpark, especially after seeing a few people breaking into Water Parks and filming it on YouTube. To actually get the permission to go in there, have the water turned off, and be able to recce the flumes was absolutely incredible. The Water Park was my idea as well, when we were flying out there I was saying to Matt (Red Bull Athlete Manager) it would be amazing if we could ride the water parks as Dubai is known for its water parks, like they’re the best ones in the world. It was incredible to be able to bless my tyres on that.
BIKERUMOR: What is the hardest trick you’ve ever pulled off?
Kriss Kyle: The heli-jump, it was, absolutely insane! You can see in the video that when the helicopter flies in it is all over the place, it’s kind of wobbling around so I had to tense my arms and try and hold the bike a different way because of the downwash from the helicopter was that bad. I was trying to maneuver the bike round, but for some reason the bike wanted to get sucked away sideways, it was horrible.
