The 31-year-old Simon Billy skied down the steep slope Chabrières yesterday at 255.5 kilometers per hour. No one else ever went that fast. The previous world record was set by Italian Ivan Origone, who raced down it in 2016 at 254.958 kilometers per hour.
Only track in the world
The piste in the French mountain village is terribly steep with a gradient of up to 98 percent. It is the only place in the world where such official speed records are broken.
Watch Billy race down in this video from France’s BFMTV:
“It was the section of my life. This is a childhood dream come true,” Billy told French newspaper Le Monde after the descent. He comes from Vars himself, grew up with skis and helped with the world record attempts as a child. His own father, Philippe Billy, came down there in 1997 at 243 kilometers per hour. That was a world record at the time.
Skiers hit Chabrières at 200 kilometers per hour within 6 seconds. In comparison: experienced skiers often come down at about 60 kilometers per hour.
In 2017, Billy also tried to break the world record. That then ended in a bizarre crash. Here’s what went wrong then.
