Nik Wallenda’s tightrope walk across Niagara Falls is focus of ABC live special
'Megastunts' will cover aerial daredevil's most challenging event yet
Comments (1)BY GINA SALAMONE / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, June 14, 2012, 6:00 AM
IDA MAE ASTUTE/ABC
Nik Wallenda practices at the Seneca Niagara Resort in preparation for his walk over the falls.
Friday is just another day for daredevil wire walker Nik Wallenda, even though he’ll be crossing a tightrope over raging Niagara Falls.
No biggie for the seventh-generation member of the famous Flying Wallendas. He already holds six Guinness World Records for other sensational stunts, like longest bicycle ride on a tightrope without a safety net.
“Nothing really special,” Wallenda, 33, says of how he’ll spend the hours beforehand. “We say a prayer before I do my walk, but nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary, to be honest.”
But there’s nothing mundane about the feat, airing live on ABC Friday during the 9-11 p.m. special, “Megastunts: Highwire Over Niagara Falls — Live!” It’ll be preceded at 8 p.m. with “Countdown to Niagara: The Greatest Megastunts of All Time.”
Wallenda will walk from the U.S. to Canada across a 1,550-foot tightrope, suspended 173 feet above the falls. This has been banned for 128 years, but after much lobbying, Wallenda scored special permission.
The Niagara Parks Commission “unanimously passed a bill saying that it would not allow any stunts except for mine, only once in a generation, till they consider even hearing somebody’s idea of a stunt,” Wallenda says. “So, in other words, once every 20 years.”
He’ll attempt to cross the Horseshoe Falls, the two largest and fiercest of the three Niagara Falls.
“We’ve spent a couple of weeks up in Niagara Falls at the Seneca Niagara Casino — training on a cable the same size, the same tension, low to the ground, and usually the same distance, so we can duplicate what the cable would be like,” Wallenda explains.
“We also brought it wind machines creating winds of up to 55 miles per hour,” he adds. “And then a fire truck company came out and sprayed a heavy mist on me. I walked a couple of days while it was pouring out rain for a couple of hours — anything I could do to get more and more experience for the very humid or wet conditions.”
ABC is requiring that Wallenda wear a harness for the stunt, stating, “We want it to be exciting and thrilling, but we also want every parent in America to know that we’re going to make it comfortable for them to watch with their kids.”
Wallenda was reluctant to agree to this at first, but gave in. “I respect what I do,” he says. “I’m not scared of it, that’s for sure. But I realize that there is danger involved in what I do.”
Wallenda comes from a long line of wire walkers. His great-grandfather Karl Wallenda died in 1978 at age 73 when he fell from a tightrope between the two towers of the 10-story Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The younger Wallenda says his most accomplished stunt yet was doing that same walk last June.
“The most challenging is mentally more than physically,” he explains. “I’ve walked the wire since I was 2, so it becomes very routine and very natural to me. I went back and re-created that walk, along with my mother. And that was probably the hardest walk I’ve done to date. So that was all mental of course.”
Wallenda’s three kids — Yanni, 14; Amadaos, 11; and Evita, 9 — seem to be following in the family’s footsteps for now.
“They have been walking the wire for quite a while now, and it’s just a game to them,” Wallenda stresses. “They don’t take it seriously, nor do I expect them to. It’s all in the name of fun, and it’s all down low at this point.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/television/nik-wallenda-tightrope-walk-niagara-falls-focus-abc-live-special-article-1.1095143#ixzz1xu37gQPc
