A never-before-seen aerial crossing marks a new milestone in wingsuit flight.
Manama, BAHRAIN, December 09, 2025 – Wingsuit athletes Dani Román and Fred Fugen have pulled off a landmark world-first at the Bahrain World Trade Center, performing a synchronized, head-on crossing between the twin towers from opposite sides. Dropping in at 220 km/h each, they closed in at a combined 440 km/h – more than 120 meters every second – and passed the crossing point at the exact same moment, just 10 meters apart.
Exiting a Black Hawk helicopter at 4,000 ft (1,200 meters), the pair accelerated over Manama’s skyline, split into opposing lines, then turned back in for a choreographed approach into the centerline of the iconic towers 40 meters above the building’s trademark wind turbines.
Román and Fugen first saw the Bahrain World Trade Center during a 2022 visit and immediately locked onto its potential for a synchro project. What followed was a two-year push through planning, permits, simulation work, technical mapping, and flight training.
“Crossing through this building in a synchronized flight has been a dream of ours for the last two years,” said Fugen, the French three-time world champion freeflyer with 20,000 skydives and 1,500 BASE jumps under his belt. “To imagine something we’d never done before, then work for it and make it happen here in this beautiful building, was an incredible feeling.”
Threading the gap was the easy part; the challenge came in syncing their trajectories so that both athletes arrived at the centerline together. Without any instruments or live data, they relied purely on sight, reference points and physical sensation to match their speed and timing.
“We don’t have a GPS, or any of the information planes have, so the only way we know the speed is by the feeling in our body,” explained Román, a Spanish Red Bull athlete renowned for his high-precision wingsuit and BASE projects. “It’s tricky because in training, if you get wind from one side, one has a headwind and the other gets tailwind. I have no idea how, but on the first day of shooting it worked. Magic happened!”
Their preparation began in France with more than 35 training jumps, using a static drone at 200 meters to simulate the crossing point and build repeatable reference lines. Those GPS tracks were then overlaid onto the Bahrain World Trade Center, followed by a second
phase of desert training in Bahrain adjusting to local flying conditions with the local helicopter crew.
Beyond the numbers, the project leaned hard on trust built over years of flying together.
“We spend much more time on the ground together than actually in the sky, so it’s important to have a really good connection. It’s about friendship and having fun together,” said Fugen. Román added: “Fred’s a legend of the sport, so to fly and plan this thing with him was amazing.”
The feat relied on a wide network of partners, including the Bahrain Tourism Authority, Bahrain Olympic Committee, and the local Red Bull team. Filmed in Manama, the video is being released ahead of Bahrain National Day on December 16, spotlighting the city and country that shaped the project.
“It’s hard to make something like this happen in other countries,” said Román. “All the support we got from the people here, the government – and how open to this project they’ve been – has been incredible.”
After years of work, the final approach lasted only seconds. Both athletes turned into the gap, accelerated and aligned their sightlines before the crossover point.
“When we saw each other coming and knew we did a perfect crossing, it was just an amazing feeling,” said Fugen. “For us, it’s huge because we were able to realize it exactly how we dreamed it. We couldn’t have done it better.”
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