Meet Shady Beshr; Egypt’s one and only base jumper. His love for extreme sports and sky diving lead him to become one of the region’s most sought after adrenaline junkies.
Shady has begun skydiving on the 29th April 2010 in Skydive Dubai as a tandem student. He enrolled himself in Skydive Dubai’s first ever AFF class in November 2010, making him the first Egyptian to graduate Skydive Dubai AFF course and obtain the USPA license.
Tell us how you got into sky diving and base jumping?
“It started when I was a child. My dad used to be in the military, the special forces, and part of his army duties was sky diving — he had done a total of 22 jumps. I happened to have stumbled upon the pictures of him wearing his parachute and actually jumping out of a plane, which completely blew me away.
I was maybe 14 years old in Alexandria when I came to find out that the Army club was giving people the opportunity to do static line jumps. When I went I found out I was underage and the office managing the activity belittled my excitement at the time and was very dismissive, which made me want to come back!
At 16, I returned on my birthday to find out that it was over 1,200 LE to do the jump. Keep in mind that amount of money over 20 years ago was a big deal, so I left defeated. But the dream never died inside of me.
It all changed when a couple years ago, before Sky Dive Dubai even existed ( it was a privately owned company by the Crown Prince in which he would do his jumps from). One day, I kept hearing the sound of a plane buzzing and I looked out of my window to find skydivers dropping from the plane; I immediately jumped in my car and started following them to their landing site. I was so persistent and kept asking questions, they offered that I try it out and did my first tandem jump!”
What is one of the coolest sky diving events you’ve been to?
In 2012 I went to the US to participate in a Guinness World Record event for the most amount of sky divers jumping in a heads down position all connected to one another. It was approximately 132 jumpers at once!
That summer I decided to quit my job and start taking sky diving seriously, not just as a sport but something that compliments my lifestyle and my mindset. This was also the summer in which I first began base jumping.
So are you the only Egyptian base jumper out there?
“Correct! I had a mentor that once told me don’t go into base jumping until you have had a total of at least 1,000 sky dives under your belt. He actually told me not to get into the sport due to the high fatality rate, 1 in every 4 base jumpers die!
People watch videos of the sport online and don’t really realize how much work goes into creating these videos, so the high fatality rate comes from people not training properly.”
Which do you prefer base jumping or sky diving?
“They both actually compliment each other for me. For me, I’m not the best sky diver or base jumper in the world, but that means I have to train all the time. So in order to be a good base jumper I have to be a great sky diver and constantly be jumping.”
What would you say are your favorite sky diving and base jumping locations?
“I would say Dubai would be my favorite sky diving location because the visuals are insane! Your jumping over the biggest man-made island in the world, alongside the highest skyscrapers.
As for base jumping my favorite location would be Switzerland and Norway. All base jumpers in the world go to Switzerland every summer for this jump, people refer to it as death valley. Last summer, 13 people died there, due to the lack of experience and training.”
So what are your upcoming plans?
“I’m trying to break a world record. I want to become the first Egyptian who has jumped all four corners of the world, no one has ever attempted that yet. I’ve done one of the three points which is the Dead Sea. I still have the North and South Poles, and Everest left.
Hopefully, I’ll be finishing it in the next two years. I have to train in extreme conditions to be able to handle the likes of Everest.”
What piece of advice can you give to aspiring Arab sky divers and base jumpers?
“Be serious about it, you need to set your goals. If you want to go from A to B, go from A to B don’t go via C. Keep at it no matter how long it takes, I have been wanting to jump since I was 14 and I did my first jump when I was 27!”
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