Red Bull athletes Horacio Llorens and Rafael Goberna pull of Palm Fountain stunt – Sport360 News

Red Bull athletes Horacio Llorens and Rafael Goberna teamed up to take part in an exclusive one-off stunt over the stunning Palm Fountain, at the Pointe, Palm Jumeirah.

The performance, now showing in a new Red Bull TV short film The Breaking Pointe, saw Llorens and Goberna wear special paramotors to glide between Palm Fountain’s jets of water, which was recently crowned the world’s biggest fountain display.

In the film, the athletes – along with a large team of specialists – demonstrate what it takes to plan a stunt of this kind. Viewers see the pre-event training, engineering, as well as intensive training sessions and practicing choreography.

“As soon as we got the opportunity, we wanted to fly there,” explains pro paragliding pilot, Llorens. “The ultimate challenge is that we were flying in the night, which means low visibility. Therefore, we needed to know the area really well beforehand.”

“Also, we needed to know how to ‘play’ with the Palm Fountain, which was new for us. And with such strong streams of water shooting up 100 metres, we had to be really prepared.”

Llorens, along with fellow athlete and friend Goberna had been discussing and practicing tricks and choreography for some time prior to arriving in Dubai. Once in the emirate, the duo – along with the entire project team – conducted trial runs in the Margham Desert in daylight for two days.

Paragliding with a paramotor is a complicated process and requires skill, patience and very, very precise planning, including needing to be adjusted according to the location they’re in. “During training that’s when we were testing the paramotors, adjusting the gliders and the brakes,” continues Llorens. “Rafael [Goberna] did have a little problem with his motor.”

Goberna elaborates, “The motor wasn’t flying so good, because prior to arriving in Dubai, it was last used in Europe at high altitude. Therefore, I needed to adjust the carburettor in the air inside the motor.”

“In the first practice flight over the water, I broke one propeller. I really couldn’t understand what was happening. And then another one broke. Eventually, a back-up motor was required.”

Refusing to give up, the entire team worked tirelessly to be ‘fountain-ready’ for the filming of the film. “It was super nice for us to have finished for us this way – the process was definitely challenging from the very beginning,” concludes Goberna. “After a long journey, the result was beautiful. The team worked incredibly hard to make it.

“The highlight for me was playing between the super shooters with Rafael, because it’s something we’ve never done before; it felt really new and really powerful – with the water coming to our sides extremely high.”

Goberna adds: “You feel the air coming up with the water – and the water splashes against your face because it’s so strong. It was such a nice experience.”

Know more about Sport360 Application