James Foster House Jump Goes Wrong

DanielKusenda

• October 17 2008
• 1,296 views
• 4 comments

James Foster decided he would jump over a house in Germany but things didn’t go so well. He wrecked his foot pretty bad and was in the hospital. This is what James had to say about the whole thing.”Basically I got an email from Thomas Goring earlier this year, asking if I wanted to jump a house for a German TV show. So I said sure why not. Well a few months later, I think it was in May, They flew me out to Germany to do a test jump, for the TV producers to see that it could be done or whatever. The lip is 10 feet tall with a 15 ft. transition, and basically the whole back side of the roof is the landing, so it wasn’t very difficult to clear, you just need a ton of speed to get over it, so they had a guy towing me with a quad.It went fine, I jumped it a bunch of times, did some tricks over it, and went home. Months later, Oct. 1st I fly back out here for the actual tv show, which is a live event, I guess it’s a very big show out here, called “Wetten Das.”  I got here wednesday, checked out the ramp, and got some sleep. Thursday we went back to do some practice jumps. The lip was set back a little farther but other than that it was pretty much the same as in may. Again, things went fine. I jumped it a few times, did a double whip over it, tuck no handered it, and wasn’t worried about anything. The tv people told me in order to have it count for the show, I had to clear the entire house, up and over the entire roof and land on the landing after the roof ended. I said alright, and had Peter tow me a little faster on the quad, and jumped the whole fucking thing, which was a little scary. It was about a 35 foot gap to where I landed and I think I was about 15 feet above the lip. Then I went to do it one more time before we left, and Peter went pretty fast on the quad, and here’s where I made the mistake, I pulled on the tow rope to get a little extra speed because I wanted to make sure I landed where they wanted me to land. As soon as I came over the top of the roof I yelled, “oh fuck” threw my bike and fell from about 8 feet above the top of the roof of the house all the way to dead flat. I guess I didn’t really realize I could overshoot the whole thing but it happened. I broke my tibula, fibula, and basically shatterred my ankle. So I’ve been stuck in a hospital room here in Germany since thursday night. They did one surgery to put the metal contrapyion you’ll see in pic I attached to put everything back in place, and I get to fly home thursday and I have to get another surgery when I get home to take all that off and they’re going to try and rebuild my ankle and leg with screws and plates and stuff. So I’m pretty bummed about the whole thing, I’m not sure how long it’s going to be until I can ride again and I don’t even know if it’s going to be the same when it heals but I’ll be playing a lot of video games in the mean time. Oh and what happened after I got hurt they needed a replacement rider to do it, so they had Sven do it, but apparently the reason he didn’t actually clear it is because the axle on the quad got bent when Peter accidentally flupped it and they couldn’t get speed. Sorry for writing so much, I have nothing else to do in this damn hospital. -James”