MY (SPORTING) OBSESSION Hoff Road - ivansmith.co.uk · MY (SPORTING) OBSESSION 32 JANUARY 2006 THE...
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MY (SPORTING) OBSESSION JANUARY 2006 32 THE BEAUTY of being in this business is you get to travel the world and work with the professionals – the stunt guys. Every time I go someplace foreign I do something exciting, like skydiving. I once went up with the Golden Knights, which is the US Army team; there are 12 of them so I figured that, if I die, 12 of them are going to die. I try to lower the odds and make sure I’ve got pros around me. With skydiving, you’ve got to put your faith in the instructor, who at that point is God. It’s much scarier to step out of a plane than stepping out on stage. I can walk out in front of 10,000 people and it’s in my hands to control the situation. But when you go skydiving you bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, then jump out. That’s terrifying. But you smile for two days afterwards: ‘I’m alive! Hi, I’m alive, how are you?’ You’re still filled with adrenalin. One of the most exciting things I do is scuba diving. I dive all over the world and do a lot of wreck diving; I dived in [the] Cocos Island in Costa Rica, where the first thing you see is 80 hammerhead sharks six-to-10-feet (1.8-2.5m) long and manta rays the size of a van. You can’t believe it – it’s like you’re on mushrooms. We do nitrox (with a higher-than- normal level of oxygen) dives, so you can dive all day long because you need less time to decompress. I’ve had some pretty wild times in Australia. My very first dives were on the Barrier Reef. The guys threw in chum and all these sharks came around me. I don’t think I would be very good at rock- climbing on those super-high mountains. I was once shooting a high-tower thing, went to go down, and froze. I had to have stunt guys come out and talk me down. White-water rafting is great fun. I’ve done the Tuolumne (River, California) where all the rapids are class fives (the most difficult) except the first one. For my 46th birthday I got all my friends together to go and do that river. You had to take a test by swimming across this amazing rapid. It was about the most fun we’d ever had. In terms of the [organisers] I go with, I say, ‘Listen, if I die, you’re going to get really bad press!’ I reckon they’re going to save my ass first if it goes wrong. I also have the dubious distinction of twice shutting down a Sydney airport by having a flat tyre on my buddy’s airplane. I was a passenger. They were like, ‘Oh, it’s that friggin’ Knight Rider again.’ Hoff Road As expected of a man who drove a talking car and saved drowning women, actor DAVID HASSELHOFF loves extreme sports WORDS: IVAN SMITH. PHOTOGRAPH: TOM HOLLAND. STYLIST: NICK SMITH. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: SUZANNE KING. DAVID HASSELHOFF APPEARS COURTESY OF PEPSI AND WEARS CLOTHES COURTESY OF PADDY PALLIN. SEE P97 FOR STOCKIST DETAILS. AL06_obsession.c.indd 32 AL06_obsession.c.indd 32 30/11/05 2:37:23 PM 30/11/05 2:37:23 PM
Transcript of MY (SPORTING) OBSESSION Hoff Road - ivansmith.co.uk · MY (SPORTING) OBSESSION 32 JANUARY 2006 THE...
MY (SPORTING) OBSESSION
JANUARY 2006 32
THE BEAUTY of being in this business is you get to travel the world and work with the professionals – the stunt guys.
Every time I go someplace foreign I do something exciting, like skydiving. I once went up with the Golden Knights, which is the US Army team; there are 12 of them so I fi gured that, if I die, 12 of them are going to die. I try to lower the odds and make sure I’ve got pros around me.
With skydiving, you’ve got to put your faith in the instructor, who at that point is God. It’s much scarier to step out of a plane than stepping out on stage. I can walk out in front of 10,000 people and it’s in my hands to control the situation. But when you go skydiving you bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, then jump out. That’s terrifying. But you
smile for two days afterwards: ‘I’m alive! Hi, I’m alive, how are you?’ You’re still fi lled with adrenalin.
One of the most exciting things I do is scuba diving. I dive all over the world and do a lot of wreck diving; I dived in [the] Cocos Island in Costa Rica, where the fi rst thing you see is 80 hammerhead sharks six-to-10-feet (1.8-2.5m) long and manta rays the size of a van. You can’t believe it – it’s like you’re on mushrooms. We do nitrox (with a higher-than-normal level of oxygen) dives, so you can dive all day long because you need less time to decompress.
I’ve had some pretty wild times in Australia. My very fi rst dives were on the Barrier Reef. The guys threw in chum and all these sharks came around me.
I don’t think I would be very good at rock-climbing on those super-high mountains. I was once shooting a high-tower thing, went to go down,
and froze. I had to have stunt guys come out and talk me down.
White-water rafting is great fun. I’ve done the Tuolumne (River, California) where all the rapids are class fi ves (the most diffi cult) except the fi rst one. For my 46th birthday I got all my friends together to go and do that river. You had to take a test by swimming across this amazing rapid. It was about the most fun we’d ever had.
In terms of the [organisers] I go with, I say, ‘Listen, if I die, you’re going to get really bad press!’ I reckon they’re going to save my ass fi rst if it goes wrong.
I also have the dubious distinction of twice shutting down a Sydney airport by having a fl at tyre on my buddy’s airplane. I was a passenger. They were like, ‘Oh, it’s that friggin’ Knight Rider again.’
Hoff RoadAs expected of a man who drove a talking car and saved drowning women, actor DAVID HASSELHOFF loves extreme sports
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