Belly Flopping Toward History

Diving into a refreshing pool on a hot August day sounds heavenly. But belly flopping into a pool? That just sounds painful.

Yet a group of firefighters in the Denver area braced themselves for the sting, and voluntarily jumped into the water belly-first for the 13th annual Belly Flop Contest at Water World water park in Westminster, Colo., this past Wednesday. With bulls-eyes painted on their guts (or six-packs, depending on the contestants) each man dove in as the crowd cringed.According to WISH-TV, a  panel of judges rated each dive and the winner, Eric Devereaux from the Denver West Metro Fire Department, won a five-day trip for two to the Riviera Maya in Mexico.

The contest got us thinking about some other massive belly flops ... so we turned to our friend Google and got the scoop. According to a site called videosift, the belly flop world record belongs to a man who jumped 35 feet into a mere 12 inches of water. The flopper is wearing a bathing suit emblazoned with an American flag, but the video is in Japanese, so we’re not exactly sure what’s going on. But judge for yourself here.

Meanwhile, Danny Higginbottom of the US flopped from about 30 feet high into a shallow wading pool for a British television show that claims his jump broke the Guinness World Record. It certainly looks impressive.

For the slightly less adventurous, you can also stick to a much tastier, decidedly less painful belly flop experience. Jelly Belly offers Belly Flops, an assortment of jelly bean rejects that don’t meet the company’s exacting jelly bean standards — they might look weird or be stuck together — but are yummy all the same.

Not that we don’t like stomach pain here at Tonic, but perhaps the jelly bean belly flops are more our speed.

Photo courtesy of Fantt via Flickr