Daredevil Nik Wallenda completes Niagara Falls tightrope walk
Nik Wallenda walks over Niagara Falls on a tightrope in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Friday, June 15, 2012. / AP Photo
(AP) NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario - Daredevil Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk on a tightrope across the Niagara Falls, taking steady, measured steps Friday night for 1,800 feet across the mist-fogged brink of the roaring falls separating the U.S. and Canada.
Afterward, he said he accomplished the feat through "a lot of praying, that's for sure. But, you know, it's all about the concentration, the focus, and the training."
The seventh-generation member of the famed Flying Wallendas had long dreamed of pulling off the stunt, never before attempted. Other daredevils have wire-walked over the Niagara River but farther downstream and not since 1896.
"This is what dreams are made of, people," Wallenda said shortly after he began walking the wire.
The rich, tragic history of daredevil Wallendas
He took steady, measured steps amid the rushing mist over the falls as an estimated crowd of 125,000 people on the Canadian side and 4,000 on the American side watched. Along the way, he calmly prayed aloud.
ABC televised the walk and insisted Wallenda use a tether to keep him from falling in the river. Wallenda said he agreed because he wasn't willing to lose the chance and needed ABC's sponsorship to help offset some of the $1.3 million cost of the spectacle.
Nik Wallenda
/ David DupreyFor the 33-year-old father of three, the Niagara Falls walk was unlike anything he'd ever done. Because it was over water, the 2-inch wire didn't have the usual stabilizer cables to keep it from swinging. Pendulum anchors were designed to keep it from twisting under the elkskin-soled shoes designed by his mother.
The Wallendas trace their roots to 1780 Austria-Hungary, when ancestors traveled as a band of acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, animal trainers and trapeze artists. The clan has been touched by tragedy, notably in 1978 when patriarch Karl Wallenda, Nik's great-grandfather, fell to his death during a stunt in Puerto Rico.
After he made it to the Canadian side of the falls, Wallenda said that at one point in the middle of the stunt, he thought about his great-grandfather and the walks he had taken: "That's what this is all about, paying tribute to my ancestors, and my hero, Karl Wallenda."
About a dozen other tightrope artists have crossed the Niagara Gorge downstream, dating to Jean Francois Gravelet, aka The Great Blondin, in 1859. But no one had walked directly over the falls, and authorities hadn't allowed any tightrope acts in the area since 1896. It took Wallenda two years to persuade U.S. and Canadian authorities to allow it, and many civic leaders hoped to use the publicity to jumpstart the region's struggling economy, particularly on the U.S. side of the falls.
A festive crowd gathered on both sides of the border to watch Wallenda, spreading blankets and setting up folding chairs under picture-perfect blue skies and summer-like temperatures.
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I always like it when someone jumps over the falls in an act of suicide, and then when rescued says he or she was just seeking attention. A woman who takes a bottle of pills and dials 911 is seeking attention. Anyone who goes over Niagara Falls wants to die for real.
i sat there with my husband (whose idea this was to watch) and it was like the aids to his so-called risk-taking were endless. shoes that provide traction. the baton thing. the cable connected to his waist to prevent him from falling!
is this the ambition of a daredevil? please!
anyone whose response is that I (or my like-minded peers who are clearly correct in their observations that this wasn't really risky at all) wouldn't be able to do this misses the point. We are not the ones shouting from the rooftops that we are daredevils.
This was pretty disappointing.
What a rip-off! Safety cable? Of course he wasn't nervous! I'll bet his great grandfather is ashamed! This one doesn't count!
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A stupid, mean-spirited comment by one obviously possessing far more mouth than balls...character...or brains, dkn747...
It's no fun if there's no chance of watching a brave man fall to his death in prime time...right?
I look forward to critiquing YOUR Niagara Falls walk where you can show that sissy Wallenda how a "real" man does it...
Your walk probably won't be televised live though...no major network was going to allow even a circus pro like Nik Wallenda to cross w/o a harness...and sure as hell would never risk losing viewers over a loud-mouthed nobody like you.
But hey...you could always try FOX...they might go for it!
I for one would thoroughly enjoy seeing a creature such as yourself try to match Nik's feat. There'd be high-fives and drinks all around when you fell (or far more likely...when you filled your pants as you wimped out)
The great Karl Wallenda once described his passion for the high wire as follows...
"The only time that I'm alive is up on the wire...everything else is just waiting"
Apparently...in your case, the only time YOU feel alive is when you're denigrating and bad-mouthing someone else
Do you imagine that sort of behavior somehow makes you appear to to be a man, dkn747?
It doesn't!
Why don't you sit UNDER that high horse...and taste some of Old Dobbin's truth?
It's sure to be an improvement on what both of you are full of now.