An Austrian mountain biker has been granted a Guinness World Record for riding off a platform 3.80 metres above the ground and landing his back tyre on a small cardboard box.
Mario Neurauter's drop has been ratified as the highest vertical drop on a bicycle onto a target (male). Guinness World Records lists the mark as 3.80 metres, or 12.46 ft, achieved at Sölden in Tirol, Austria, on 13 September 2025.
The target was a small red cardboard box. Neurauter rode off the elevated platform, came down on it with his back tyre, and crushed it.
"I wasn't scared, but I knew that hitting the box would be tricky," he told Guinness World Records.
The attempt was made at the Bike Republic Sölden Festival. Over the same weekend Neurauter also attempted the records for the highest vertical drop on a bicycle, without a target, and the highest 360 vertical drop on a bicycle onto a target. Guinness is still reviewing the evidence from both.
The ratification was reported by Ben Hooper for UPI on Thursday, rather more than a year after the drop itself.
The record covers two things, and only one of them is measured. The height is 3.80 metres, certified to the centimetre and converted to 12.46 ft for readers who prefer their precision imperial.
The other half of the discipline is the box. The box is what makes the drop a drop onto a target rather than merely a drop, and Guinness maintains a separate category for each, which establishes the box as the variable under test.
The box's dimensions are not recorded. Its position is not recorded. Its material is recorded as cardboard. What is recorded is that it was small, that it was red, and that it is no longer a box.
Our analysts at the Department of Unnecessary Research observe that this makes the target both the instrument of measurement and the thing consumed by the measurement, a condition the sciences generally try to avoid. The evidence that the box was hit is that the box was flattened. The evidence that the box was flattened is the box.
Two further attempts from the same weekend remain under review more than a year later. This newspaper assumes the hold-up is not the height.
The drop is certified to two decimal places in two systems of units. The box is unavailable for inspection.