“Showing him and his family was a showcase to do these epic things. “We really wanted to show Robbie in his pure form, but also the human side of Robbie, him in his own element, being a family man, a really inspiring person with tons of records and just a fantastic human being overall,” Trevino said. Being a father is the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced as far as being consistent and being accountable, and ultimately your kids get to the level of how much you put into them.”įor Razor, working with Maddison was a no-brainer having the rest of the Maddison clan involved was what really took the project into another stratosphere. “Where I’m getting pushed my them is to be the best father I can be. “They’re proud of Dad regardless,” Maddison said. So, back to the original source of motivation: were the Maddison boys impressed with their dad’s jaw-dropping quadruple backflip in the sky? “Capturing it and the editing was just as important as the performance,” Maddison said. “That was the only thing that happened in the moment at 5,000 feet,” Maddison recalled with a chuckle.Īfter all, Maddison says, it’s not just about the stunt, performed in a vacuum the filming crew and production are what bring it to life. Maddison shifted to the left, McCormack moved to the right, and as Maddison took off down the ramp, McCormack let go, straightening the ramp just in time. Trying to ride down the ramp at an angle would have prevented him from being able to do the backflips at best and been disastrous at worst. “He was like, ‘Go! Go!’ and I was like, ‘I can’t! It’s on an angle!’” Maddison recalled. McCormack’s weight tilted the ramp on an angle. On the day of the stunt, however, there was one anxiety-inducing surprise.Īs you can see in the video, to get the shot of Maddison launching off the ramp, prior to then following him in the air, skydiver and award-winning sky filmer Sean McCormack climbed onto the underside of the ramp-unstrapped. Maddison never practiced riding the bike off the modified ramp from that height, but he went through all the other steps in the process and perfected it before going up in the helicopter. He needed to remove the last three feet the length of the ramp was generating too much g-force.
“The ramp was too steep,” Maddison explained. He also hung the ramp above his foam pit and practiced doing a backflip into it-and promptly tore his calf muscle. Prior to actually taking the bike up, Maddison got reps jumping out of the plane and out of a hot air balloon and doing backflips without it. It wasn’t just, ‘We’re gonna jump out of a helicopter now ’ it was months of planning.”Īll the preparation paid off the entire jump was filmed in just one take, resulting in the destruction of only one Razor bike. “He’s a daredevil in the purest form, but he’s also really careful and got the right team and he really thought about this and planned it all out. “We couldn’t have dreamed this up ourselves Robbie came up with this tremendous idea and the next thing you know, he was building a ramp and testing it in his backyard,” said Alexis Trevino, RAZOR USA’s senior director of global marketing. Razor knew that it wanted to work with Maddison on a project, but it deferred to him as the mastermind to develop it. He’s selecting his projects and preparing for them carefully he’ll be stunt doubling for Jason Statham in the new The Expendables film after doing the same for Daniel Craig in 2012’s Skyfall and for Vin Diesel in XXX: Return of Xander Cage (in that case, riding a dirtbike on the ocean).
But he’s not trying to go out every day and do crazy things just for the sake of saying he did them. Make no mistake “motorcycles are always going to be my life,” Maddison says. It gave me the same exhilaration I got from motorcycles, but skydiving seems kind of safer than freestyle motocross.” I dealt with a lot of depression after that. “In 2015, I had a traumatic head injury and died on the front yard of the house in front of the kids, traumatizing the whole family. “I’ve been dead five times,” Maddison says.
In recent years, however, in the interest of his health and preventing head injuries, Maddison has pulled back from FMX and focused more on water-based stunts, as well as pilot training and skydiving. His aforementioned 2008 record of 350.98 feet still stands-though plenty are taking a shot at it. He won multiple other FMX events around the world and soon turned his focus to stunt performing, setting two world records in May 2005 with the Crusty Demons motorcycle stunt group, traveling 221 feet on a 125 cc bike and 246 feet with a Superman seat grab on a 250 cc bike.
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