SEARCH NEWS:

 

Tightrope Walker Traverses to Casino Niagara Tower

Jay Cochrane, a veteran high-wire walker, needed just 12 minutes to make it across a 67-metre-long steel cable today in this tourist hotspot.

The wire, less than two centimetres thick, was strung 40 storeys above the ground and stretched from the top of a downtown hotel to the Casino Niagara tower.

The 58-year-old North Bay, Ont., native must still convince city officials in Niagara Falls to allow him to walk a tightrope over the Falls. He's been denied the request many times in the past.

Wearing an electric blue sequin jumpsuit, Cochrane battled a cold wind estimated at 24 to 27 kilometres an hour as he walked across the wire.

He stopped midway to strike a one-foot, one-handed pose for a crowd of photographers waiting in the tower and a gathering of spectators on the ground below.

Despite no safety net, Cochrane insists he is not a daredevil but an athlete.

``Daredevils and stunt people are people who get in barrels and balloons and bubbles, or whatever it is, and then maybe go over the Falls, and nine times out of 10, they don't make it, and you've got to use the taxpayers' dollars to go rescue them,'' he said.

``No (Niagara Falls) tightrope walker ever had to be rescued, and they always brought tax dollars here.''

Cochrane said there have been 11 tightrope walkers who have gone across the gorge between the American and Canadian falls. The last was in 1897.

Cochrane said he doesn't want to cross the gorge because that's been done. His goal is to cross from a tower on the American side to a skyscraper on the Canadian side.

He plans to make three skywalks on a lower wire a day throughout the summer tourist season.

< Gaming News