{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "NewsArticle", "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/trbovlje-human-catapult-guinness-records-roman-fugen/#article", "mainEntityOfPage": "https://badiyaa.com/trbovlje-human-catapult-guinness-records-roman-fugen/", "headline": "Human catapult in Slovenia’s Trbovlje chimney launches wingsuit pilot 100.36 meters for two Guinness rec", "description": "Dani Román rose 100.36 meters from a human catapult inside Slovenia's 360-meter Trbovlje chimney, earning two Guinness titles with Fred Fugen.", "datePublished": "2026-11-13T17:48:00+00:00", "dateModified": "2026-11-13T17:48:00+00:00", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Badiyaa Editorial Desk", "url": "https://badiyaa.com/author/editorial-desk/" }, "publisher": { "@type": "NewsMediaOrganization", "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/#organization", "name": "Badiyaa", "url": "https://badiyaa.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/badiyaa-logo-color-600x60-1.png", "width": 600, "height": 60 }, "email": "badiyaavideo@gmail.com", "publishingPrinciples": "https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/", "correctionsPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/corrections/", "actionableFeedbackPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/contact/", "ownershipFundingInfo": "https://badiyaa.com/about/#ownership", "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61595518283625", "https://www.instagram.com/badiyaa.com.ai/", "https://www.threads.net/@badiyaa.com.ai" ], "parentOrganization": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Rezilient Digital", "url": "https://www.rezilientdigital.com/", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "Fl No 3, Nav Shyam Sadan, Plot No 38, Pestom Sagar, Chembur", "addressLocality": "Mumbai", "addressRegion": "Maharashtra", "postalCode": "400089", "addressCountry": "IN" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/rezilientdigital" ] } }, "isAccessibleForFree": true, "inLanguage": "en-US", "wordCount": 594, "image": [ "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/tet-trbovlje-dimnik-scaled.webp", "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/tet-trbovlje-dimnik-1024x725.webp" ], "articleSection": "Offbeat", "keywords": "Dani Román, Fred Fugen, Guinness World Records, Red Bull, Trbovlje", "articleBody": "Two professional BASE jumpers were fired straight up out of Europe’s tallest chimney at 180 kilometers per hour, and the launch has now earned two Guinness World Records titles. Spanish wingsuit pilot Dani Román rose 100.36 meters after leaving the launch capsule, the greatest height ever reached by human catapult, Red Bull said in its own account of the project published on November 9. The launches took place on November 5, 2026, at the disused power station chimney in Trbovlje, Slovenia. Román, 35, then went again alongside France’s Fred Fugen, 47, in a simultaneous shot. Román climbed 75.97 meters and Fugen 75.75 meters above their release points, a combined 151.72 meters and a second Guinness title. When a clip of the stunt first spread online, Badiyaa checked the viral 100-meter human catapult claim against the Guinness listing, which at that point still showed a 70-meter mark. The organizers’ account now names both records in full. A 60-meter catapult inside a 360-meter chimney The setting is as unusual as the stunt. The Trbovlje Chimney was built in 1976 for a lignite power plant on the Sava River and stands 360 meters (1,180 feet) tall, the highest flue-gas stack in Europe. Engineers made it that tall so smoke would clear the deep, narrow valley in any weather. The plant shut in 2016, and in 2020 climbers Janja Garnbret and Domen Škofic scaled a route built up its outside wall. For the catapult, the Slovenian stunt and engineering crew DD Squad spent two and a half years building a 60-meter launch system into the top of the shaft. It took the jumpers from standstill to 180 km/h in 2.15 seconds and loaded them with forces of up to 4.2G. The highest point of the flight was 456.7 meters above the ground, before both men fell back, opened parachutes and landed safely. The numbers, worked through Turning the published figures into everyday terms shows why the jumpers described the ride as violent: Average acceleration: 180 km/h is 50 meters per second. Reaching it in 2.15 seconds means an average of about 23 meters per second squared, roughly 2.4 times the pull of gravity, with the 4.2G peak coming on top of that. Height gain: 100.36 meters is about 43 percent higher than the 70-meter mark that sat in the record books before this attempt. Experience: the two athletes have more than 32,000 parachute jumps between them. What the jumpers said Román said the hardest part came before the launch. “The most intense part is when you get into the catapult because you know what is coming,” he said. “In that capsule you cannot really move. You are really stuck in there.” Then, in his words, “it’s just ‘bam!’ – you go from zero to 180kph in two or three seconds, shooting straight up out of the chimney.” At the top, he said, everything seemed to move in slow motion before he started falling again. Fugen, a veteran of thousands of jumps, called the scale new territory. “The reality of what happened here is crazy,” he said. “It’s something you cannot train for, but we fully trust DD Squad.” The pair worked together before on an aerial obstacle course in 2025. Badiyaa tracks more feats like this in other Guinness record attempts, including a Melbourne school’s ABBA impersonator record. The Trbovlje Chimney itself was poured in 210 days and holds 11,866 cubic meters of concrete and 1,079 tons of steel, the structure that now carries two of the strangest records in skydiving. Further reading Wikipedia: Trbovlje Power Station Image: Tamino Petelinšek, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.", "markdown": "https://badiyaa.com/trbovlje-human-catapult-guinness-records-roman-fugen.md" }