Stuntman clears the Vegas air with an arc of triumph - 2nd January 2009

The Australian stuntman Robbie Maddison rode into the new year with a gravity-defying feat in Las Vegas.

Speeding down the strip outside Paris Las Vegas casino at 90kmh, he launched his Yamaha motocross bike up a giant ramp, flew 37 metres through the air and landed on top of a replica of the Arc de Triomphe.

The stunt was equivalent to jumping onto a 10-storey apartment building.

After landing safely, Maddison, 27, of Kiama, on the South Coast, took his death-defying stunt further, by dropping off the Arc de Triomphe and free-falling onto a landing ramp below.

Tens of millions of TV and internet viewers around the world looked on.

"It's definitely a milestone in my life - to overcome the fear I had," an elated Maddison said afterwards, his left hand dripping with blood from the impact of the freefall. "The hand kills; I think I broke it."

Maddison was invited back to Las Vegas for the biggest party night of the year after making a world record jump there last New Year's Eve.

In front of a sell-out crowd at the Rio Casino and Hotel, he had pulled off a stunt that his hero Evel Knievel had said could never be done - by clearing 98 metres. Maddison dedicated that achievement to Knievel, who died in 2007. But on Wednesday he had little regard for the American legend's "joke" of a son.

While Maddison was making his conquest of the Arc de Triomphe, Robbie Knievel jumped 61 metres over a man-made volcano outside the Mirage Hotel and Casino - a stunt the Australian labelled inferior and an attempt to steal his thunder.

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