Daniel Bodin has beaten his freestyle rivals Colten Moore and Heath Frisby to the first successful double backflip in history on his custom built snowmobile.
The swashbuckling Swede was in a race against time to outdo the Americans’ attempts, which are due to take place at the Winter X Games in Aspen at the end of January.
After a series of test jumps, the 31-year-old gunned his snowmobile towards the kicker in a forest glade on his home snow of Malung and completed two full backflip rotations.
Not only that, the snowmobile motocross star managed to land his 450-lb (204-kg) vehicle back down safely from 45 feet in the air.
Previous high-profile attempts at the elusive trick by Levi LaVallee at the 2009 Winter X Games and Justin Hoyer in the 2011 event both came up short, however Bodin was confident that he could finally wrap up the holy grail of tricks.
He declared: “I did it! I can’t believe I did it! The rush! It just can’t be described—nobody in this world can understand the feeling. I have nurtured the dream about nailing this trick for more than two years.
“I have always felt that this trick was mine and I simply couldn’t let anybody else beat me to it. But pulling off a double for the first time in a competition didn’t feel right. I wanted to do it without the pressure and in an environment that I could control.”
Bodin will leave Moore and Frisby to try it themselves in Aspen, his focus elsewhere this time around.
He added: “I have focused so hard on the double in the past months. Everything else was put on hold. Now I’m looking forward to X Games and a chance to ride the Freestyle and Best Trick competitions with an easy mind. I hope I still can surprise.”
The multiple Winter X Games gold medallist first came to the sport’s attention when he landed the world’s longest backflip of 147 feet nearly a decade ago.
He also managed to battle back from a 2012 horror crash that fractured five vertebrae to continue his gold medal haul, along with a near 215-feet jump off a ski jump slope.
Here's the video of Bodin's double backflip:
Source: Red Bull Content Pool
