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Skydiver Michael Holmes says he will continue free-falling for a job, despite nearly dying in his December 12 plunge to earth from 3600m above Taupo airport.
"It was a million-to-one chance," he told the Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper. "I'm prepared to stake my life on the likelihood
that it will never happen again."
"I'll continue making my living teaching skydiving and I'll still spend part of the year going round the world to different competitions."
Mr Holmes survived because he landed in a blackberry bush, breaking his fall.
The newspaper reported that the video Mr Holmes -- a former champion skydiver from Britain -- shot of his fall with a helmet camera was "the most gut-wrenching, mesmerising and shocking clip of video footage imaginable".
Photographs from the video have been posted on the Mail website, and Mr Holmes is reported to have been offered more than $43,000 for TV rights to the video record of the moment when he tugged the ripcord and discovered his parachute would not open.
It shows frantic efforts to release the twisted parachute, as he spins so fast that movement is almost impossible, and then his attempt to release his reserve parachute -- and the horror as he realises that, too, has become entangled above him.
TVNZ said it would be showing "chilling video of Michael Holmes" on Close Up tonight.
Mr Holmes' friend Jonathan King, who jumped from the same plane, also filmed the fall, and as he landed a few seconds later, his helmet camera showed Mr Holmes -- bleeding, broken, unconscious -- but alive with only a punctured lung and a broken ankle.
"I didn't have time to think about anything," Mr Holmes told the newspaper.
"Friends ask if I was scared but really I was just angry that I'd done everything exactly as I should and it hadn't worked.
"I was very focused on what I was doing and I remember everything. Nothing's a blur."
At an altitude of 550 feet -- five-and-a-half seconds from the ground -- the film shows Mr Holmes waving goodbye.
"I tried to think of something, the right thing to say for the camera. But I looked at the ground again and without thinking I just blurted out "Oh shit, I'm dead... Bye!"
Mr Holmes estimated that he had reached terminal velocity of 193km/h during the freefall part of his flight, but that the drag of the parachute had reduced his impact speed to around 128km/h.
He missed the airport car park by less than 30m and instead landed in a blackberry patch which arrested his fall just enough to save his life.
Mr Holmes was in Waikato Hospital for 11 days. He hopes to resume skydiving in April.
- NZPA, NZHERALD STAFF
