Roberta Mancino, just named the sexiest woman in sport by Men’s Fitness Magazine, is no stranger to the wild blue yonder. She has jumped out of a plane more than 4,000 times. She even did it naked. Not once, but four times.
Mancino, of Italy, loves skydiving so much she kept on doing it even though her main parachute didn’t open on five separate occasions.
“My parachute failed five times because the way I packed it was wrong,” Mancino told the magazine. “I had already jumped 28 times before I experienced my first malfunction, but I was really freaked out. I was spinning very fast and this made a cutaway on the main parachute difficult. When your first parachute does not function properly, you have to use your reserve, but first you have to release the malfunctioning parachute from you. This is what we call a cutaway. With the tremendous amount of force on the release system during the spin, it can make for a very hard pull on the cutaway handle. When I had a fewer number of jumps I thought maybe I was going to die, but now I can’t live without skydiving because it has become my life.”
Did we mention she’s a model too? Mancino has been featured in many a magazine, is a world record-holding skydiver, and doesn’t just jump out of planes. She also jumps off some of the tallest buildings in the world. She is the current Italian national freestyle champion and the Free Fly Record Holder. She spends her free time training for national skydiving competitions.
Did we mention she’s jumped out of a plane 4,000 times?
Just checking.