Samer Madi: The man who held Lebanon in the air

When Lebanese athlete Samer Madi hung from the landing skid of a hovering helicopter, body locked in a perfect straddle human flag, there was only one thought running through his mind: do not let go. In an exclusive interview with The Beiruter, “The only thing I was thinking about is that I can’t give up,” he said. “There are hundreds of thousands of people in the Arab world and abroad waiting for me. Some people can fail, some can succeed, but it’s forbidden to fail, it’s forbidden to give up.”

For 21 seconds, Madi held a pose so physically brutal that most elite athletes can barely maintain it on solid ground let alone midair, battling turbulence, wind pressure, and gravity. Those seconds, he said, were the culmination of years of discipline: “You think you’ve been training for years. This is your chance… all your effort will show in these few seconds. This is what kept me calm.” Guinness World Records confirmed the feat, officially naming him the record holder for the longest duration holding a straddle human flag on a flying helicopter.

Breaking a Fear to Break a Record

What the world did not see was the fear Madi had to conquer before even approaching a helicopter: a phobia of heights. “Mentally, I had a phobia,” he said. “So I started paragliding, I had to paraglide 57 times on my own. That’s what broke it.” His physical preparation was just as extreme. Weighted human flags with 5 to 10 kilos. Human flag drills on a drift car. Then on a pickup truck. Then on a Jeep Wrangler. Slowly adding speed, wind, instability, building the conditions of chaos he would eventually face in the air.

“Training on vehicles was the first thing that prepared me for the helicopter,” he explained. “I was getting my body used to the pressure, the shaking, the resistance.” By the time he was ready for the real attempt, Madi had spent years engineering an environment that replicated the uncontrollable: drag, movement, turbulence. But nothing was truly comparable. “The pressure of the helicopter, the air, the height, it was very difficult,” he admitted. “I had never tried something this hard. But thank God, I was able to do it because I prepared myself for years.”

For Lebanon

To Madi, this record is far bigger than personal achievement. He tells The Beiruter, “It means one thing that we, as Lebanese people, when we set a goal in our mind, we can achieve it,” he said. “There is nothing impossible when a person follows a healthy lifestyle, distances himself from everything unhealthy, and believes in himself.”

His message, delivered with pride, mirrors something deeply Lebanese: resilience that borders on stubbornness. “Especially us Lebanese, we are stubborn,” he added with a smile. “Even if it takes us years to recover, even if we fail, we don’t give up. We do it again.”

As Lebanese youth watch Samer Madi suspended over the sea, he wants one thing to reach them clearly: “Nothing is impossible,” he said. “When you practice right, when you believe in yourself, when you maintain a healthy lifestyle, you can do it. You can enter the Guinness World Records. You can break record-breaking numbers.” He pauses. “All you need is to believe in yourself… and to be an inspiration to others.”