Wing walking, at one point, was one of America’s most popular events. It was the 1920 version of a David Blaine stunt, in which people would walk or move on top of a moving biplane. As it turns out, not only are people still doing this, they’re still breaking records in the process. Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Ashley Battles took to the wing of a biplane over San Francisco, spending four hours defying death armed only with her iPod and her dancing shoes, breaking the Guinness World Record for wing walking.
It might seem goofy, and it might even be goofy, but it’s also dangerous. “Just knowing I am now the world’s greatest wing-walker, it was so overwhelming I started crying,” said the 27-year-old Battles. “But I’ll tell you, every part of my body aches. Even my eyes are swollen,” she said after battling hurricane-force winds and freezing cold for four hours atop a Super 450 Boeing Stearman biplane. “One bird is all it takes to kill me. The force would just crush everything in my body. I get covered with millions of bugs, but I hold my breath every time I see a bird.”
The previous record, held by a Frenchman, was 3 hours 23 minutes. Battles took off and landed at Gnoss Field Airport in Novato, California. When she’s not walking on wings, she attends Oklahoma State University.
Tags: Guinness World Records, world record stunts, woman walks on wing for four hours, wing-walking world record, Ashley Battles, Novato, Tulsa, Oklahoma, woman dances on biplane wing for four hours, Super 450 Boeing Stearman, Gnoss Field Airport
