Robbie Maddison considers next jump

By Jodie Minus
Updated November 5 2012 - 9:26pm, first published July 17 2009 - 11:37am
Daredevil biker Robbie Maddison with fiancee Amy Sanders. Picture: DAVE TEASE
Daredevil biker Robbie Maddison with fiancee Amy Sanders. Picture: DAVE TEASE

So Kiama daredevil Robbie Maddison jumped London's Tower Bridge, now how about Sea Cliff Bridge?"If they put the cash up, he'll come," his father Peter Maddison said.And how much would that be?"A serious amount," Mr Maddison said."The Las Vegas jump that they did (on New Year's Eve) cost them over $US20 million, and the one they did the year before was around the same money."Mind you, (the organisers) sold $30 million worth of advertising from it but technically it takes a fair bit of cash to stage these things in the first place."On Tuesday, Maddison celebrated his 28th birthday by leaping over the 23m gap in London's Tower Bridge.That stunt followed his vertigo-inducing New Year's trick, which saw him fly 37m into the air and land on the top of a Vegas replica of the Arc de Triomphe before jumping back down to the ground again. So what other Illawarra landmarks could Robbie tackle? The 25.3m Wollongong Lighthouse? The 10m-wide Kiama blowhole? Or maybe he could put Windang on the map by zipping over the mouth of Lake Illawarra?"Robbie has a very fertile imagination but I don't think there is anything in the Illawarra that is big enough," his father said."They tried to get him to come to WIN Stadium and then he put it into perspective and said he could actually jump WIN Stadium."But regardless of the cost of luring the 21st century Evel Knievel here, Tourism Wollongong chairman Jim Eddy wasn't too keen on the idea."I probably wouldn't encourage any of that, in case be breaks his neck," Mr Eddy said."And I think those kind of things gain notoriety for the fellow doing the jump but I don't think it does a lot for tourism."

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