I'm not going to die!

Freefalling from 3,000ft, a botched skydive left ultra-athlete Jack Jarvis plummeting towards the ground at 120mph and out of control. Despite everything, all he could think was.... I'm not going to die!

- By Karen Rockett

HURTLING towards the ground at 120mph, British adventurer and endurance athlete Jack Jarvis pulled on his parachute cord.

It was his 26th skydive and nothing had ever gone wrong before. But this time the chute wrapped around his leg and wouldn’t open properly.

‘‘I was at 3,000ft and it got stuck round my leg,’’ he told the Daily Express in an exclusive interview ahead of his next big challenge. ‘‘At that speed the sheer force of the chute opening violently dislocated my knee.

‘‘The sound was absolutely horrific. My knee was facing away from my body and my foot’s facing towards it. The joint was wrecked. I was in agony and panicking, but I just kept saying to myself, ‘I am not going to die, I am not going to die’, and I was trying to keep calm and get back in control.’’

Jack, a former soldier with the British Army, somehow managed to untangle himself after around 10 seconds, which no doubt felt like a lifetime, and landed one-legged in Netheravon, Wiltshire.

‘‘It was a total freak accident and I was extremely unlucky, or very lucky, whichever way you choose to look at it. Not a bad landing though considering it was on one leg,’’ he grins.

That was in 2023 and, after surgery and 18 months of rehabilitation, the 32-year-old from Hamble, Hampshire, is fit and ready to take on his greatest challenge yet. From next month, he plans to run 13,000km (just over 8,000 miles) from Beijing to London, the longest run ‘‘home’’ in history.

He will run approximately 50km (31 miles) every single day — the equivalent of more than 300 marathons in consecutive days.

Jack will run through 18 countries, including China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, France and finally England, crossing the finishing line at Trafalgar Square in around March 2027.