Steve Fossett

Not surprisingly, Steve Fossett is considered a national treasure in the US and is one of the country’s most outstanding living adventurers. He is a legend and his résumé reads like a chronicle of records that have been broken over the past ten years. In total, he has notched up more than 100 - 60 of which remain unbroken.

Steve is a millionaire businessman, an accomplished jet pilot, a world-beating balloonist and one of the world’s fastest sailors. If that wasn’t enough, in his spare time he has swum the English Channel, raced across Alaska on a dogsled and competed in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii. To Steve, breaking records and making history is a way of life. Not bad for a man who’s just celebrated his 61st birthday!

To Steve, it’s all about accomplishing something that very few other people can and being the first to do it. He’s probably best known for being the first person to travel solo around the world in a hot air balloon, which he achieved in July 2002 in Budweiser Light Spirit of Freedom, after eight years of trying. Seven years earlier, Steve became the first person to cross the Pacific Ocean in a balloon. His other firsts include flying solo in a balloon across the continents of Africa, Asia, South America and Europe, as well as the South Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Ocean.

Steve obviously has a passion for flying planes as well as balloons. He holds the record for the fastest flight ever in a non-supersonic aeroplane (742.02mph) and the transcontinental record for non-supersonic flight across both America and Australia. Along with co-pilot Terry Delore, Steve has set nine of the 21 Glider Open records.

Steve doesn’t just set aviation records, but is also one of the best speed sailors in the world. In October 2001, he beat the record for sailing across the Atlantic by two days, travelling from England to New York in just four days and 17 hours. In April 2004, he was captain of the Cheyenne when it knocked a whopping six days off the official World Record for circumnavigation by a sailing boat. In total, he holds seven of the fastest official World Records for sailing and 13 out of the 22 outright World Records as recognised by the World Sailing Speed Record Council.

You may think that with so many amazing achievements under his belt Steve would relax for a while. No chance. For his next project he will join forces with co-pilot and navigator Mark Rebholz and the Vimy Project to re-create the world’s first non-stop transatlantic flight which took place in 1919. Aiming to depart in June 2005, the pairwill be flying a Vimy replica, the world’s largest flying biplane, for their 1,960 mile journey across the North Atlantic.