Franky Zapata sets new “farthest hoverboard flight” record in France. Zapata flight a distance of 2,252 meters (7,388 feet), far surpassing the previous record of 275.9 meters (905 feet, 2 inches), set last year by Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru.
Zapata was about 50 meters above the surface for the attempt and trailed by a fleet of boats and jet skis, achieving the new flight on a craft developed by his company Zapata Racing. He has also held an earlier Guinness record for doing 26 backflips with a water jet pack in a single minute.
Sofia Grenache, who is a Guinness World Record adjudicator, confirmed that the hoverboard complied with the rules of the record and had reached a historic distance.
Who is Franky Zapata?
Franky Zapata is the founder of Zapata Racing based in Marseille, France, is the inventor of Flyboard and the Flyboard Air. Zapata first came into the spotlight as a jet-ski racer and received the title of RUN F1 World Champion. After many years in manufacturing jet-skis, he invented the Flyboard in spring of 2011. Through this invention, Zapata mixed all his passions in one product.
Also, a short video of a test flight of the Flyboard Air went viral, reaching over 3 million views on YouTube, with many viewers leaving comments doubting if the hoverboard was actually real.
80s Nostalgia
The hoverboard first appearance in 1989 on Back to the Future where a flying skateboard was used by Michael J. Fox character, Marty McFly, in the film. In the movie, Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer arrive at the future on October 21, 2015. Doc Emmett Brown electronically knocks out Jennifer and leaves her asleep in an alley, explaining that she should not have too much knowledge of future events.
Since the film released a “prediction” of the future, Arbortech Industries Limited released the first air board in the early 00s. Later, many models and prototypes were released. In October 2014, American inventor Greg Henderson demonstrated a prototype hoverboard working on a magnetic levitation principle. This has been the closest to the hoverboard that people has ever been.
Late in 2015, Romania-born Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru had set a new record for continuous travel as a controlling pilot on an autonomously powered hoverboard, traveling over a distance of 275.9 m (302 yd) at heights up to 5 m (16 feet) over Lake Ouareau in the province of Quebec, Canada. Duru had designed and constructed the hoverboard himself over the course of a year. Its lift is generated by propellers, and the pilot controls the craft with his feet.
Source: Guinness World Record