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Student dives 700 times in 24 hours

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Student dives 700 times in 24 hours
Photo: DPA

A German student has broken the record for the most consecutive high dives. Jumping over 700 times from a diving board in 24 hours, doctors forced him to stop.

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Twenty five-year-old Dennis Bettin is a student at the German Sport University in Cologne who, over Saturday and Sunday dived 714 times from a three-metre-high diving board. No one, said Die Welt, had ever done this before.

By Saturday night, the extreme athlete was vomiting, his shorts had ripped and he was beginning to bruise down his legs. Cramp had also set in. “It's time to take a break,” onlookers shouted, to which Bettin replied “just let me do it!”

Eventually doctors convinced him to stop, and ordered a six hour break. But just three hours later, Bettin was back on the board, determined to finish what he started – and he did, smashing the world record.

Originally a long distance runner, Bettin moved onto the more thrilling side of sport after “at some point, it became too boring and repetative.” He admitted to having simply opened the Guiness Book of Records and “had a look and a think about which record I could beat.”

“There were a lot of possibilities,” he added. Although, the diving stunt was not the first extreme activity he had given a go. In December Bettin tried to walk five kilometres barefoot at a Hamburg indoor ski slope.

After 33 minutes he gave up: his feet were bleeding profusely. Little time later, he and a friend attempted to walk from the North Sea coast to the Zugspitze mountain right in the country's south. But with little planning, money or food, Bettin was found on a park bench passed out, and taken to hospital.

Recently Bettin has been more successful though and as sponsorship come rolling in, he told Die Welt that he was already planning what to try next. “It might be even crazier, but unfortunately I can't say what it is yet.”

The Local/jcw

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