Eddie Kidd was 20 years old and mostly fearless as he attempted to jump a viaduct in 1979. He was the star of Riding High, a film about a motorcycle messenger who begins training to take part in a major competition.
In his role as stunt biker Dave Munday, Kidd performed the jump across an 80-foot gap in a disused viaduct across the Blackwater River in Essex using a 400cc Yamaha. The drop to the river was 50 feet.. ‘Experts’ predicted that Kidd would be killed if he fell. It probably didn’t take an expert to figure that out.
Not only did Eddie need to get up enough speed on his 400cc Yamaha trials bike to make the jump, he also had to land between the two giant pillars that once connected the brick railway bridge.
In a BBC intervie Eddie explained, “They asked me to do the jump at the end of the film because they were worried,” said Kidd. “It had been raining a few days before and they insisted that I have a mud guard on the front of my bike. But while in flight the wind caught the mud guard and over balanced the bike, so the landing was not easy."
“I was also told to wear a visor on my helmet, which blew backwards as I was landing, but I nailed it.”
The movie was filmed with two endings, one where Dave Munday dies, the other where he lives, because no one was sure if Eddie would survive the final stunt sequence. The jump was the last scene shot.
