Zorbing huh? I don’t really know anything about it aside from the fact it looks kinda fun and that guy from the Flaming Lips comes out in a zorb every time into the crowd and rolls around for a bit. Someone told me once that they were at a festival and he came out in a zorb and everyone rolled him over to a fence and threw him over it and he couldn’t get back to the stage to finish it, but I don’t believe that for one second, it’s like that story that if you won snake on your old Nokia then you got a free phone – everyone has heard it but nobody has actually seen it happen.

Anyway zorbing looks kinda fun and I’m pretty sure I did it once at some crappy resort in Spain and it was kinda fun, but not like something I really ever wanted to do again that badly. Especially now as it seems like you might DIE from riding a zorb. Although probably not if you do it in Spain or England, but definitely if you do it in Russia. Those crazy Russians huh, does anything work over there? That failed spectre of communism, residing over everything.

Apparently zorbing is so popular in Russia that it’s actually now classified as a sport although I thought in a sport you have to compete against something/someone and I don’t see how you can really do that when you’re just strapped into a ball and rolling down a mountain. Unless you’re competing against the Grim Reaper of course. I guess that’s why they call it Russian roulette. Zorbing is also so popular over there that a zorb is now officially going to be the symbol of the Winter Olympics, which are being held in the Russian town of Sochi, which is where this incident took place.

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Anyway, if they want zorbing to be actually be a symbol of the Winter Olympics and maybe even considered as a sport in them in time for the 2014 Olympics then the Russians probably need to get some better safety precautions because earlier this week in the Caucasus mountains a ride on a zorb went pretty badly wrong for two Russian guys when it veered off course and left one of them – Denis Burakov, who was 27 –  dead and the other one –  Vladimir Shcherbakov – in the hospital with severe head and spinal injuries. Ouch. Turns out the slope was in gross violation of zorbing policy as you’re supposed to have a fence at the bottom of the slope and on the sides of it and this has neither.  The president of the company that manufcatures the most zorbs in Russia, who is called Sergei Loginov offered this statement: ‘“It’s not even irresponsibility. It’s an experiment on life. It’s all or nothing. They either survive or they don’t.’ Oh Russia.

Amazingly, video footage of the two men in the zorb has been released and you’re probably going to watch it because even though it’s essentially a snuff movie it’s the inherent human impulse to watch anything that is vaguely wrong/gross/sick and to be honest the video isn’t even that bad as you don’t really see anything except a zorb rolling down a hill out of control and if you didn’t know that they died you probably would just think it was really funny that the guy at the bottom is running after it and trying to stop it and not having any success at all. As you probably do know that though it’s a whole lot more morbid when you watch it.

The end is particularly bad though as you seem them plummet down this slope really fast and then disappear from viewpoint and you’re like ‘oh shit.’ Apparently the guy filming it asks  ‘what’s down there?” and someone else replies ‘A catastrophe’ which kind of sums it up. At some point after the video finished the two dudes were flung out of the zorb and then rolled for one whole mile down the slope, banging and cracking their bones the whole way. Imagine rolling down a ski slope super fast, it would absolutely cane. Kinda like when Homer falls down that canyon on the Simpsons when he tries to jump it on the skateboard. Yeowch. They were still alive and could stand after the ordeal but Denis died en route to the hospital of massive head injuries. Major bummer. Imagine if zorbing was the last activity you ever did. That would really suck AND be really embarrassing. Sucks.

Check out the video below if you can stomach, although like I said it’s not actually that gory or bad just really morbid when you know what happened afterwards. Bet you all watch it:

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8jaEp8aA4Q’]
 
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