Flying: Homemade Highflyers

Grand Prix drivers like to talk about the rubber they burn when drifting through a chicane. A steeplechase rider will verbally rebreak every bone in his body at the drop of a crop. But none of those dangers can hold a Band-Aid to the ones experienced routinely by the madmen of sporting masochism: racing pilots. Whipping airplanes around pylons mere yards above the deck is a sport so risky that it all but disappeared from the U.S. scene after famed Flyer Bill Odom crashed to his death in 1949. Since 1964 it has...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!