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78-seconds-to-glory dash in London serves as inspiration
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JAMES Heptonstall, a 30-year-old English touch-rugby player, became the world’s first person known to outrun a Metro train by completing the stunt within 80 seconds last September in London.
With a GoPro camera attached to his head, Heptonstall started at the Mansion House stop on the Circle Line and ended in the same carriage at the Cannon Street Station before the doors closed.
He finished the 415-yard, platform-to-platform sprint in 1 minute, 18 seconds with an average speed of about 11mph, on a route that included two ticket barriers and 75 steps, according to the Daily Mail.
The train took 1 minute, 20 seconds to travel along 339 yards of track, timed from the moment its doors closed at Mansion House and opened at Cannon Street.
Last November, a Beijing native also raced the tube and won. Pan Hailong, a 26-year-old professional 400-meter runner, completed the 800-meter dash from the Nanlishi Road Station to the Fuxingmen Station of the Beijing Metro Line 1 in 2 minutes, 23 seconds.
In this man-vs-subway challenge, Pan burst out through the train’s open door, negotiated two ticket barriers, sprinted up 203 steps and ran across two intersections in an attempt to beat it to the next stop.
“The route between Nanlishi and Fuxingmen stations is shorter than others. In addition, the two intersections don’t have red lights. We ran at night because there were fewer people,” Pan told a Beijing newspaper.
During the sprint, Pan almost knocked down a pedestrian, brushed past a young couple and avoided two cars. The footage was filmed by iDarex, an extreme sports club. It was Pan’s second try to beat the subway, having failed the first time by a few seconds.
“We have members to look out for cars and pedestrians. The only principle of this sprint is to make everyone safe,” said the club’s director, Zhang Lei.
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