Man Catches Stranger's Cellphone Midair During Roller Coaster Ride
Professional athletes regularly make game-changing and mind-boggling plays, but a New Zealand athlete made one particularly impressive catch while riding one of the fastest roller coasters in Europe.
Samuel Kempf, a fistball player from New Zealand, was in Barcelona, Spain, with his team for the Fistballing World Championship, Stuff New Zealand reported.
During a day at PortAventura theme park in Barcelona on Thursday, Kempf decided to ride Shambhala, a roller coaster that, until 2018, held the record for being the tallest and fastest hypercoaster in all of Europe.
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As the coaster began to climb higher and higher, Kempf, riding alongside his cousin, Abigail Kempf, noticed what was happening to a rider seated ahead of him.
“The guy two rows ahead of me, as the ride started doing its ascent before it drops, he had his phone out and he dropped it and it just landed at the bottom of his cart,” Kempf told Stuff New Zealand.
“He was trying to reach down and grab it but because he was locked in he couldn’t reach it and I just jokingly said to my brother and the people we were with, ‘get ready to catch.'”
As the thrilling coaster drop began, all thoughts of the cell phone flew from Kempf’s mind.
He was enjoying the 86-mile-per-hour ride when all of a sudden, the stranger’s cell phone floated right in front of his face.
Kempf and his cousin noticed the flying phone, and with lightning-fast reflexes, Kempf managed to lean across his cousin and snatch the phone in mid-air.
Kempf said he had been absorbed in the moment of the ride, but then, “after the first drop we rose up and I just saw the phone drift across my view so I reached out and managed to catch it.”
Once on the ground, the thankful stranger wrapped Kempf up in a “big hug” as a crowd gathered to watch the replay video footage.
The crowd clapped and cheered at the big moment when Kempf made the impressive snatch.
The grateful phone owner convinced the park staff to let him buy a copy of the video, which he promptly handed over to Kempf as the souvenir of a lifetime.
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