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Escape Artist Hit by Roller Coaster.


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Gunnarson, who lives in the Riding Mountain area, injured his right foot Tuesday when it was clipped by a roller-coaster car that was zooming down tracks where he had been chained and handcuffed.

Gunnarson had freed himself and was diving to safety when the car caught his foot.

"It's sore. There's internal bleeding and it's swelling and it's causing me a great deal of pain. It just hurts like heck," Gunnarson said Thursday.

He arrived home from China late Wednesday night.

Gunnarson, who was shooting the escape in Beijing as part of a Chinese TV special, said he doesn't believe anything necessarily went wrong, the car just clipped him as he was diving to safety.

"It was a fast roller-coaster," he said. Although the injury is a painful one, it's far from his worst.

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edit: 100 kph is roughly 51 mph

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The roller coaster is Crystal Wings (A B&M flying coaster) at Happy Valley Beijing.

072910escape1.jpg

Source.

I'm so surprised at this... If it were an "illusion" thing and he was claiming that it was magic and it was all smoke and mirrors, I can understand actually running the train. But a real, physical escape stunt? What were they thinking? Had he taken one second longer, he would certainly have died. How would that have looked for the park? Or, for B&M? For China's safety regulations (which, as of late, have appeared to be quite lax).

Wow...

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does a ride manufactuer have to approve something like this before the stunt is done, or is it left up only to the park?

i just ask because i remember a few years ago when criss angel mindfreak did an "escape" from canyon blaster at circus circus in las vegas.

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Sad state of affairs when someone cares about a coaster over a living, breathing human being...

As for this "stunt," these are timed down to the second. What this means is that if this guy was at a certain point, and was not as far as he should have been, the assistants were most likely instructed to pull him off. What I saw in the pictures, he took more time to take the debris off the tracks, something most likely they did not rehearse in practice. Also, he was most likely delaying to make his 'escape' look more daring, and the jumped a millisecond later than what he should have.

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I agree with you in a way coaster junkie and SOB and rcfreak. However he is a human being doing a show for the people. He was injured. Who cares if the roller coaster is ok or not it is just a machine. And as RCFreak said even if it did it would just be a little adjustment. As in many other threads where it is talked about hitting your hand on The Beast tunnels. That could tear your arm off. If it happened sure it would be that persons fault not the rides but saying you do not feel sorry for him? The girl who just plunged 40 feet. She could be dead for all we know at this point, we could blame her for even riding it in the first place. No Human life or injury is worth the sake of a ride.

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It's a B&M flyer like the Superman: Ultimate Flights, Air, Tatsu and Montu...

Montu, the B&M flyer?

GYK, who was about to make a "big blue B&M" joke before realizing that Montu is, in fact, a big, blue B&M... ;)

It's definitely not from this angle, but that image is showing the bottom of a pretzal loop (where riders are facing the sky) and a simple flying maneuver that comes after.

p20804.jpg

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Uh...Manta...which was probably named that due to Montu already being out there...

Terp, who apologizes for any confusion he has created, now any he will probably create in the future...

Hopefully, that clears the air...

It must be Sunday, I can smell the fliers in the August air...

And who had another poster on another board think he had made up Europe in the Air, and was being sarcastic!

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Except, except, except...the three US Superman: Ultimate Flight models are not identical. Georgia's pretzel loop is either far more or far less intense than the other two, depending on who you ask...

Note that rcdb has differing lengths for the three, with SFGAm being the outlier. I do not think this is correct.

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The Georgia coaster, unlike the other two US ones, also has a dual loading station, much like Firehawk's, and seven row trains. The other two only have a single side loading station, and eight row trains.

Georgia's was the first...and the coaster I did not fit in on media day...a few weeks later, Gary Story, then CEO also didn't fit. The next year, the trains had been redone! :lol:

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