Base jumpers take giant leap off Burj

8 Jan 2010, 12:09 pm   -   Source: SBS, YouTube
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The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is proving too tempting for base jumpers, who have been captured leaping from the world's tallest buidling.

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Two dare-devils have just broke the world record for the highest base jump, leaping some 672 metres off the world's tallest building - the newly opened Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Long known as Burj Dubai - Arabic for Dubai Tower - the building rises 828 metres from the desert. It officially opened this week.

Arabic television showed the two base jumpers performing their plunge.

The jumpers, bother UAE nationals, were given permission for the jump.

Not the first jumpers

The two may have achieved the highest jump, but they are apparently not the first to jump from the super-skycraper.

A video posted on YouTube shows a base jumper leaping off the building, apparently illegally, before the structure was complete.

  

In the video posted on YouTube the jumper describes how he began base jumping and recounts his attempt from the Burj. The video is from May 2008, well before the tower was officially opened. According to information on YouTube, the video was posted in more than a year ago.

The commentary says when they attempted the jump, the building was only 650 m tall.

The video says the jumper returned three months later to leap again, but it was no video of that.

Dubai opened the world's tallest skyscraper on January 4 in a blaze of fireworks, then added a final flourish: It renamed the tower for the head of neighbouring Abu Dhabi, whose billions bailed out Dubai amid last year's financial crisis.

The $US1.5 billion ($A1.64 billion) "vertical city" of luxury apartments and offices and a hotel designed by Giorgio Armani also plans to have the world's highest mosque (158th floor) and swimming pool (76th floor).

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