Euro freeride stars Joscha Forstreuter and Timo Pritzel have jointly set a new MTB high jump world record in China. The unlikely location was due to the attempt being made on China’s Guinness World Record Show – a kind of 21st century emerging-market Record Breakers. Actually, it appears to put anything on British TV to shame in terms of audience – it’s an annual show, and last year attracted 60million viewers.

The record attempt was for the official Highest Bicycle Ramp Jump. Timo Pritzel already held this record, with a 5.12m jump set on a BMX eight years ago. This time around, both riders were on 26in wheels. The specially-constructed ramps included an 8m roll-in, a 1.8m launch and a 3m landing.

Joscha Forstreuter picks up the story:

“We started at 4.5m which wasn’t a big deal. The next height of 5m looked way more impressive. It’s a totally different to jump over a pole. To me it’s much more scary than a normal jump. It looks like one big wall. Even if you know that it’s not very dangerous to hit the pole as it just falls down you still don’t want to hit it.”

“Timo hit the pole at 5m, but then made it easily on his second attempt. Next height was 5.20m, the new record. From the top of the start ramp it looked so high, I was quite sure I wouldn’t make it on my first try. But with hard pedalling down the 8m start ramp and extreme pulling on the launch-ramp I took the 5.20m without touching the pole. Timo was next and he made it perfectly, too. Both of us had a new world record under the belt.”

The two riders decided to call it a day there, and are thus joint holders of the record. It might not have all that much to do with mountain biking as we know it, but it’s certainly a long way up…