A team of four friends broke a 14-year-old world record on a Swiss lakeshore this month, launching one of their own nearly the height of a nine-story building using nothing but a giant inflatable airbag and momentum. Guinness World Records confirmed that Robin Steiner reached a height of 28.22 meters (92.58 feet) in the sport known as "blobbing," in which several people jump in unison from an elevated platform onto one end of a water-filled airbag, catapulting a person waiting on the other end into the sky.
The record attempt took place Aug. 9 in Brunnen, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz. Steiner's teammates — Luc Siegenthaler of Switzerland, Lennart Florczak of Germany and Tristan Kuhn of the United States — leapt together from a 14-meter tower onto the airbag to send Steiner airborne, according to UPI. Steiner spent roughly five seconds in the air, tumbling through somersaults before landing in the adjacent lake. The jump broke the previous blobbing height record of 22 meters (72 feet 2 inches), set in 2012 by a German trio — Christian "Elvis" Guth, Christian von Cranach and Patrick Baumann.
Guinness said the team actually cleared the old record twice that day: an earlier jump had already topped 23 meters before the group reset the tower and pushed for a bigger launch, ultimately completing the record-setting attempt just minutes before a storm forced organizers to evacuate the site.
A car crash in reverse.
Robin Steiner, describing the launch, to Guinness World Records
Steiner called the moment of impact that fired him skyward "a car crash in reverse," followed by what he described as "pure freedom" during the fall itself, according to Guinness. Blobbing, sometimes called "blob jumping," has circulated for years as a staple attraction at European lakeside water parks and adventure camps, but competitive height attempts remain rare given the precise coordination and safety planning required to synchronize multiple jumpers' body weight against a single launch point.
The record adds to a busy year of Guinness recognitions tied to airbag and water sports. Steiner's team has not announced plans for another attempt, citing the difficulty of finding a taller tower and a body of water large enough to safely absorb a bigger landing.
