Brenton Lindsey has jumped out of a plane nearly 600 times, but he’ll tell you one of the most memorable jumps is over the Giza Pyramids – making him the first African American to do so.
“I’m still in awe,” Lindsey tells Travel Noire. “It didn’t even hit me until after I was done jumping over the pyramid.”
Being the first African American wasn’t Lindsey’s intention. He was invited to jump over the pyramids as Egyptian tourism leaders try to bounce back from the effects of the pandemic.
And they invited him for good reason. If you take a look at his Instagram, you’ll notice that he tries to make the extreme sport as fun as possible. He gets into character, brings props along with his jumps, dresses up as Santa Claus, or hardly dressed in clothes at all. It’s all his way of making jumping from a plane seem less scary.
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“Black people, we bring season to everything we do,” he says jokingly.
He says not everyone in the industry agrees with his style. Yet, even with the side-eyes from other divers who he says don’t take him seriously, he says the fun aside, he wants to end the notion that skydiving is not for people of color.
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“There’s this huge stigma that sky diving is a white people’s sport. From both sides, I’m frowned upon but I take pride in that because it opens the eyes of other people of color that we can do it, too, so why are we limiting ourselves?”
Lindsey says in the next 10-to-15 years, he hopes to see more Black people skydiving.
“We dominate in everything else, so why not this?”
So, what’s next for Lindsey after achieving such a milestone? He says he’s planning his 600th jump and plans to do another life raft jump.
You can follow his skydiving journey or contact him on Instagram.