After the Queen, it was London Mayor Boris Johnson’s turn on Wednesday to have his very own James Bond moment, but it went horribly wrong and he was left dangling in mid-air for several minutes while amused onlookers took photographs and joked that he deserved an Olympic medal for his unintended feat.
“Get me a rope, get me a ladder,” he shouted.
The incident happened when a 45-metre zip wire he was trying out at Victoria Park, near the Olympic arena, got stuck half way through its journey leaving him looking like an “odd Christmas decoration” as one spectator put it. He was stuck for more than five minutes before being rescued by a ground team who pulled him back to base.
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Later, Mr. Johnson tried to make light of it face saying it had been “great fun”.
“It was wonderful and I thoroughly recommend it. I wouldn’t have wanted to be up there all afternoon, but I think loads of people are going to enjoy it. I don't know what happened. I seemed to turn around...I think, possibly, what happened is they left a brake on,” he said.
His spokesman joked that while “unlike team GB, the Mayor may not be winning too many Gold medals today”, he remained “unbowed”.
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Lee Medcalf, who watched the drama unfold, said: “The zip wire had been experiencing problems over lunchtime and then there was an announcement that it had been fixed and that someone special was coming down it. Then all of a sudden Boris came flying through the air, like a rather lame James Bond, waving Union Jack flags and shouting ‘Team GB, Team GB’. He got half way down the zip wire when all of a sudden he just seemed to sag in the middle and come to a grinding halt.
Within minutes, a video of what The Mirror described as “THE best moment of the Olympic Games so far” went viral becoming arguably the most watched “event” of the day.