Professional freerunner and Red Bull athlete Lilou Ruel launched herself off a platform and plummeted 18.2 meters into a towering haystack, obliterating the world record for the highest haystack jump. The distance stretches nearly as tall as a six-story building, and video captured Ruel screaming as the ground rushed toward her before she disappeared into the hay completely unharmed.
The stunt recreates the iconic "Leap of Faith" sequence from the Assassin's Creed video game franchise, where players jump from extreme heights into hidden piles of hay. Ruel's friends erupted in celebration as she emerged from the stack victorious. She later joked on Instagram: "Thank you, Red Bull, for giving me wings for a few seconds. I do think we can go way higher, should we try?"
This marks the second record-breaking Leap of Faith stunt by a Red Bull athlete. In May 2026, freerunner Dominic Tommasso jumped 18.1 meters while dressed as Edward Kenway from Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the recently relaunched version of the 2013 pirate adventure game.
Black Flag Resynced has become a commercial juggernaut since launch, selling 2 million copies in its first 24 hours and surpassing 3 million copies sold within a week. Ubisoft plans to release a New Game Plus mode, while the title generated $1 million in day-one DLC sales on Steam alone, marking the biggest PC playerbase spike in Assassin's Creed history.
The game's success carries a darker shadow. Ubisoft announced layoffs affecting 380 staff members in June, including 51 employees at its Barcelona office who worked on Black Flag's diving mechanics. Those workers are now demanding fair severance packages, asserting that their current offers fall "below any reasonable standard."
Author Emily Chen: "The contrast between a record-breaking stunt celebration and laid-off developers fighting for fair pay tells you everything about where gaming's money actually goes and who pays the price for blockbuster success."
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