Australian daredevil Robbie Maddison made waves around world with his incredible motorbike surfing video but he has admitted the stunt wasn't as seamless as it looks.
Robbie 'Maddo' Maddison, 34, released a video titled 'Pipe Dream' which shows him riding his bike on the giant waves of Tahiti on his motorbike.
Maddison said the crazy feat took two years to perfect and involved careful editing, an expertly modified dirt bike, a boat and a near-death experience while catching a monster wave.
The stunt rider appeared on the Today Show on Tuesday morning where he admitted it had been a 'hard project' to realise.
The most important aspect of the stunt was perfecting the modifications to his KTM 250 SX dirt bike, with rubber skis and paddles on the back wheel allowing Maddison to ride on the water.
'It's not just a standard bike by any means, there's a lot of work that goes into it and every time we sunk it it was like four hours work to rebirth it and get it running again,' he said.
'I had these specially-made rubber blocks that were sealed on to the tyre, that just allowed me to keep propelling on the water.
'The height of the ski and where the skis are positioned on the bike is very crucial.'
Maddison's mechanic Buddy Morgan told Transworld Motocross magazine his team experimented with a variety of different skis and tyres.
'Contrary to what you might assume, the overall power output of the bike didn't have that much effect on its ability to ride across the water,' Mr Morgan said.
'Instead, it was the shape and angle of the skis and the number of paddles on the rear tire that made the most difference.'
Maddison also used a barge with a launch ramp to build speed and momentum before launching onto the water, which was edited out of the footage.
He added that one wave he caught while filming was a tricky 'west bomb' wave, which crashed down with such force it pushed him off his motorbike.
'I launched off a boat to get onto the wave and then once I carried I had to track this wave for about 500 yards [457 metres] to get onto it,' he said.
'And once I got to this point I realised it was all over... Some say it was a 20 foot wave, I don't know, but yeah it took me down and I was struggling - I was lucky to get out of this.
'You don't see it but I absolutely get spanked there and the bike hits me in the back, I lost the wind out of my sail but lived to tell the story and I'm just so stoked the way it was received around the world.'
Maddison said he decided to do the stunt in full motocross gear to maintain continuity - and it actually gave him extra flotation in the water.
'The helmet's got a lot of foam in it which is a lot of floatation, I had a PFD lifejacket number three on so I had a lot of floatation,' he said.
'But I wanted to make it look real. The film starts with me on land and it finishes with me in the water… I didn't want to do a costume change, I didn't want to halfway through have a wetsuit on.
Maddison said more details on how he pulled off the stunt would be revealed in a second video.
'It looks seamless but behind the scenes launches on the 18th of August and is going to tell the full story of what we went through to make this happen,' he said.
In the video, Maddison can be seen riding past other surfers, paddleboarders and canoers while dressed in full motorcross gear.
Maddison, from Kiama on the south coast of New South Wales, is no stranger to adrenaline having worked as a stunt double for Daniel Craig in Skyfall.
He has also jumped across the Corinth Canal in Greece and the done a backflip while jumping the Tower Bridge in London, but he admitted he was terrified something would go wrong.
'I had a sickening feeling that this might be the one that kills me,' Maddison said, according to MTV.
Maddison said he had dreamed of pulling off the surfing stunt for years, after he got the idea watching his wife Amy Sanders wakeboarding.
(dailymail.co.uk)
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