The American skier soars 11.7 meters (38 feet, 4 inches) above the coping of a quarterpipe to banked landing, logging the highest air yet on this style of jump

Two-time Olympic gold medalist David Wise has a shiny new feather to add to his cap: the highest air yet on a quarterpipe, performed on Monday, April 22, 2019 at the Audi Nines presented by Falken.

On the first day of the Audi Nines, an exclusive weeklong freestyle progression session for skiers and snowboarders at Sölden and Obergurgl-Hochgurgl, Austria, Wise took advantage of optimal weather conditions to test out the event’s towering 10-meter-high quarterpipe feature. As his peers cheered him on, he quickly began rocketing to extraordinary heights.

“I was just enjoying myself and I started going a little higher each time,” said Wise. “I never got to the point where I was terrified. I eventually got some butterflies, but butterflies in a good way. We just kept going higher and higher.”

“It was really nice to have a measuring system in place so I could do a jump, find out immediately how high I was, and then go do another jump,” he added.

Wise’s final record-setting elevation: 11.7 meters (38 feet, 4 inches) above the top edge of the quarterpipe with a straight air tail grab.

A quarterpipe is a kind of jump where a rider launches vertically off a convex-shaped ramp and lands back on the same surface he or she departed from. The ramp on which Wise achieved his high air was a modified version, with a banked landing surface to increase the safety of the jump.