World's Fastest Female Wingsuit Pilot Opens Up About Horrific Accident That Almost Killed Her

The world’s fastest female wingsuit pilot Amber Forte opened up about the life-changing accident that nearly ended her career and her ambitious mission to fly across the English Channel in a wingsuit.

Speaking to host Claira Hermet on the What The Health?! show on FUBAR Radio, Amber revealed how her disastrous accident left her with a broken back and dislocated spine:

“The injury I had was in 2019, and it was 100% my fault. Looking back, I didn’t want to jump. I was tired, I was stressed, I couldn’t find my shoes, I hadn’t eaten. There was a long list of things. I actually said to my teammates, ‘I don’t want to jump.’ They told me ‘It’s a really easy jump, you’re landing on a beach, you’ve done hundreds of jumps this year. It’s super easy. You’ll be fine.’ I remember this complacency coming over me, thinking, ‘Yeah, I’ll probably be fine.’

She continued: “I crashed on landing really badly. I broke my thigh, my back, and dislocated my spine from my sacrum. I was severely injured. I didn’t jump again for a year. I spent the whole year pretty much in and out of rehab and working to try and get myself back. It was the hardest year of my life.”

I’ll look back on that jump for the rest of my life. That jump would have been just another jump I wouldn’t remember if it had gone well. But because it went wrong, it became the jump I’ll remember for the rest of my life - the jump I should never have done.”

Amber spoke about learning to trust herself to jump again after her horrific accident: “Coming back from something like that was incredibly difficult because I was so angry with myself. I felt like I had disrespected my body so badly, I was so hurt, and I made such a bad choice, that it was almost hard to believe that I could trust myself again in order to do the sport again in a way that was safe.

“I spent a year in rehab, talking to psychologists, sports psychologists, my husband, my friends. I wrote everything down. I questioned everything. And I realised that so many bad decisions happen because of ego, pressure, or worrying about what other people think. Now, I’ve lost the ability to just ‘hope it’ll be okay.’ I need to know it’s going to be okay.”

Later in the interview, Amber discussed her crazy upcoming attempt at flying across the English Channel in a wingsuit: “The idea is something I’ve dreamed about for many years. I presented the idea to Red Bull all the way back in 2018, and it’s been evolving ever since and have been really dreaming of it since. A project of that size, it isn’t just hiking up a mountain and jumping off. It's quite a big task, and it involves many different areas of expertise that I don't necessarily have.

“The shortest distance across the channel is 33 kilometres and I will be jumping from 35,000 feet and opening my parachute at around 5000 feet. I need to fly consistently 3.5 metres forward for every metre I descend. In normal wingsuit flying, we average around 2 to 2.2.

We’re looking at reducing the weight of my gear, my physical body weight, increasing my strength, refining my body position, redesigning the wingsuit itself, understanding wind systems over the Channel. We’re analysing every possible variable.”

“The Channel itself is obviously one of the biggest risks in the project. My goal is not to land in the water, and I don’t believe I will, but we still have to prepare for every scenario. We ask two questions constantly: how do we make sure I don’t end up in the water, and if I do, how do we make sure I survive it safely?”

Amber also gave her insight into facing your fears: “Fear holds all of us back in different ways. But every time we push through something we’re afraid of and succeed, we experience mastery and that feeling makes all the fear worth it. It’s important to have huge dreams, even impossible ones. But you also need small, bite-sized goals along the way. Otherwise, you drown in the fear of failure.”

“Right before I jump, I count down: ‘Three, two, one.’ The second I say ‘okay,’ all fear disappears. At that point, I trust the preparation and focus completely on the task.”