On 5 November 2026, Spaniard Dani Roman and Frenchman Fred Fugen were fired into the air from a catapult built into the top of the 360-metre chimney of a former power plant in Trbovlje, Slovenia. Roman rose 100.36m after leaving the capsule, and the two men together reached 151.72m. Organiser Red Bull announced the results as two Guinness World Records. We found no Guinness page for these records as of 12 November 2026, so they remain claims made by the organiser.
Roman is 35 and Fugen is 47. Between them they have made more than 32,000 parachute jumps.
Spring system weighing about two tonnes
The catapult is 60m long and, according to Red Bull, is the largest ever made for people. It fires them straight up through a shaft in the chimney. The power comes from a spring system weighing about two tonnes, and the whole structure weighs about six tonnes. For that reason the builders assembled it from smaller parts and took it up by lift.
The Slovenian stunt and engineering team DD Squad built it. The work took two and a half years, starting with tests over water and with smaller catapults. Fitting it inside the chimney took about two months, according to team leader Gasper Novak. Red Bull says the team tested the system under loads higher than those expected at the launch itself. Fugen says they put safety and control ahead of maximum power. The sources do not say how much the capsule weighed or what the parachute canopies were like.
The athlete waits in the capsule for the countdown. Roman says he braces to take a breath about five seconds before the start.
Height measured from the capsule
Going from zero to 180km/h in 2.15 seconds puts a force of up to 4.2 G on the body. One G is normal gravity on Earth, so at the peak of 4.2 G the athlete feels about four times heavier than usual. Roman says he could barely move in the capsule.
Height is measured from the moment the athlete leaves the capsule. The height of the chimney and the catapult does not count, because they are not part of the flight. According to Red Bull, Roman reached 100.36m above the launch point. The highest point of the flight is 456.7m above the ground, so the launch point is about 356m above the ground, below the top of the chimney. The sources do not say how the measurements were verified.
The second record is a combined one. In the joint launch, Roman rose 75.97m and Fugen 75.75m, which makes 151.72m in total. Each man rises less than in a solo launch, because the catapult lifts two people instead of one. The speed in the joint launch was 145km/h, reached in 2.66 seconds.
Some reports give the height of the two men as nearly 76m, but that is the result for each one separately, not the total. One report gives the speed as 120km/h in the headline, while the text says 180.
Descent by parachute
At the top of the arc the athletes feel a brief weightlessness. Then they fall freely and reach a speed close to the one at launch. After that they open their parachutes. According to Red Bull, both men landed without problems after each launch.