941 leaps of faith MIKE'S BUNGY BLAST!

In another dizzying display, the daredevil jumper secures his world record again

- Kasia Jillings

Ask Mike Heard what kind of kid he was and he’ll tell you he wasn’t overly adventurous. But at the age of seven, he remembers hearing about bungy jumping for the first time, and tying a cord around his ankles with his brother and diving offthe top bunk bed onto the pillows below.

As a teenager, he competed in the rock-climbing national championships and did several skydives. And as a 41-year-old father-of-two, he leapt offthe Auckland Harbour Bridge in October 2023 for 24 hours straight, bungy jumping 941 times in a row to set a new Guinness World Record.

Alongside his wedding to wife of 13 years Helen, and the birth of his daughters, Summer, 12, and Layla, eight, Mike counts it as one of the best days of his life.

“I get emotional talking about it,” says Mike, who first broke the record for most bungy jumps in 24 hours in 2017 with 430 jumps. In 2022, Frenchman Francois-Marie Dibon topped it with 765 jumps and Mike instantly knew he’d try again.

The former radio DJ and engineer says he can recall every single one of the record-breaking jumps, but two stand out.

“One was jump 766, which was when I broke the record, reclaimed it and brought it home,” he says. “When I came up, the celebration was amazing – they had a confetti cannon, someone had set up a TikTok live stream and 1.3 million people from all around the world were watching. It was such a cool feeling.”