‘It’s one of the world’s most dangerous sports’: Pilot heaps praise on Tom Cruise for his speed flying skills in the latest Mission: Impossible movie – but warns ‘if you get it wrong it’s a messy outcome’
- Gordie Oliver, who has run speed flying courses for 10 years in the northern British region of Cumbria, praised Tom Cruise’s skills in speed flying
- The sport is similar to paragliding but with a smaller canopy and enables speeds of about 50mph just inches above the ground
- Cruise, 61, learnt paragliding in France and then trained in speed flying: he did many of his own stunts while filming in Britain’s Lake District
A British pilot has praised Tom Cruise’s skills in the extreme sport of speed flying, warning that if you make a mistake the outcome can be ‘messy’.
Cruise, 61, filmed many of his own stunts for the new Mission: Impossible film, Dead Reckoning, which comes out on July 12.
He filmed scenes in the northern British region of the Lake District in September 2021, with the footage now released to promote the film.
Cruise learnt the skills of speed flying in France, before coming to Britain to film. The sport is described as one of the world’s most dangerous.
It is similar to paragliding, but with a smaller canopy. Thrill-seekers launch themselves from the tops of mountains and fly at speeds of up to 50mph down the valleys, inches above the ground.
Tom Cruise is seen speed flying over the Lake District in the UK in a scene from his new Mission: Impossible film
The 61-year-old is pictured preparing for his speed flying excursion
Cruise is seen launching himself from a mountain top in Britain’s Lake District
Gordie Oliver, a British pilot who has run speed flying courses for 10 years in the Cumbria region where the Lake District is found, said it was ‘one of the world’s most dangerous sports’.
Oliver told BBC Radio Cumbria it was a ‘great way to get down a fellside’.
‘So rather than floating around above the Lake District mountains it allows us to skim down the hillsides at a great rate of knots and inches above the ground,’ he said.
‘The Mission: Impossible guys aren’t bigging it up when they say it is one of the world’s most dangerous sports, to be flying at 50-60 mph trying to get as close to the ground as you can, hitting bits of grass as you fly down the mountains, it’s highly dangerous. ‘If you get it wrong it’s going to be a messy outcome.’
Gordie Oliver, a pilot and expert speed flyer, said he was impressed by Tom Cruise’s skills
The movie team said it was ‘incredibly unpredictable’.
Christopher McQuarrie, the director, said the crew looked on in horror as their leading man zoomed down the mountain.
‘While it may look similar, speed flying is not sky diving,’ he said. ‘Sky diving is fairly predictable, speed flying is incredibly unpredictable.
‘Flying close to rocks looks quite beautiful but behind the scenes we were all in absolute terror.’
Cruise said he had been training ‘for a few years’ in speed flying, describing it as a ‘very delicate and beautiful sport’.
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