Tancrede melet bio
Tancrède Melet
French slackliner
Tancrède Melet (1983 – 5 January 2016) was a French slackliner.
Biography
Born in 1983 in Meurthe-et-Moselle, Melet grew up in Hérault before becoming an engineer. He worked as an engineer for four years before quitting in 2008 to turn his full attention to outdoor sports with Julien Millot. The pair began with the slackline and more particularly an elevated version of it known as the highline. After a few years, Melet started focusing on performing arts, presenting himself as an "artist of the void." He was the co-founder of the Flying Frenchies, a group which combines artists, athletes and engineers. Melet, as well as the group, became known for mixing traditional circus arts (Chinese pole, Korean Teeterboard) with more daring stunts (BASE jumping).
On January 5, 2016, while preparing a show, he died in Aurel as a result of a fall from a hot air balloon that had dragged him up while taking off.
References
French daredevil plummets to death in stunt gone wrong
A French daredevil known for his high-risk slackline walks performed around the world plummeted to this death Tuesday in a stunt gone wrong.
Frenchman Tancrede Melet, an expert slackliner, BASE jumper and wing-suiter, was part of a group of stuntmen known as the “Flying Frenchies” and “Skyliners,” according to ABC News.
His team – who perform on mountain peaks and skyscrapers – confirmed Melet’s death to the news outlet.
French media reported that the 32-year-old and four members of his team were getting ready to perform a stunt in Drome, France, with a hot air balloon when Melet accidently fell more than 100 feet to the ground and was killed.
“Tancrede Melet, a surprising lover of life, surprised us yesterday morning by leaving us too soon. He leaves behind wonderful memories, a taste of freedom and a head full of dreams,” the group said on its Facebook page.
According to Melet’s bio on the Flying Frenchies website, he worked as an engineer for four years before quitting his job to become a full-time stuntman, The Inertia reports.
He leaves behind his partner, Tiphaine Breillot, and a young child.
Watch these guys surfing a highline at 75kph
For The Flying Frenchies, thinking out of the box isn’t a choice – it’s a way of life. The latest video from this multi-talented collective sees them head to the Vercors mountain range in their homeland, where they slice through the air on a 600m-high highline, reaching speeds of up to 75kph zipline-style before using their BASE-jumping skills to dismount with impressive grace and style.
Basically, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes you wonder, “Where in the world can they get ideas like this?” To find out, we spoke to Anicet Leone, who's the technical expert and one of the brains behind the fantastical Surfing The Line project.
Hello Anicet, can you tell us about The Flying Frenchies?
The Flying Frenchies are a group of buddies who like to do aerial activities. The core is composed of five to six people who do BASE-jumping, mountaineering, climbing, alpinism, speed riding – pretty much all the sports that include flying, climbing and the mountains. But we're also artists, comedians, clowns, acrobats and musicians. It’s a big mix of it all.
Our wish is to turn the values of the profit-driven society upside down to replace them with the beauty of the non-useful, to give a sense to our lives, beyond what is expected. We want our lives to be a music that leads us through our hearts. We want to be open to the unknown and to the wish to discover the world, as much outside than inside of us. We are clowns, gentle fools and we throw ourselves in the empty spaces, surfing the air to provoke and to be seen, representing the atypical dreamers' minority.
In the air, the wind is soft and the soul is freeAnicet Leone
Life is worth risking so that the message we transmit is intense, and so our existence is beautiful. Fear slowly becomes our friend: it’s not about eclipsing it but to understand what it has to say.
To an outsider, the notion of ‘playing’ seems to be what sets you aside fro .