Stunt drivers ride on two wheels between two rows of women to show off their precision control as part of the Nitro Extreme show at the Lima Mall on Sunday afternoon.
Tyler Deitsch | The Lima News
LIMA — Roaring engines, smoke and the smell of burnt rubber had Cirque Italia’s Nitro Experience audience at the Lima Mall on Sunday begging for more.
A crowd of nearly 200 people, including families, sat in the shade as trained stunt drivers performed Hollywood action film tricks.
“It’s great to see live entertainment like this,” said one attendee, who heard about it on Facebook and saw the attraction go up in the Lima Mall parking lot. The young man said he enjoyed the show and hoped more events like it come to the Lima area.
Don’t try these stunts at home or on the roads, though. The drivers and riders were trained professionals from all over the world, including Italian Desirée Desy Bizzarro, a Hollywood stunt driver who drove in Fast X. In an industry dominated by men, about half of the drivers and riders in the show were women, showcasing the changing attitudes in the business.
The show started with drivers using Nissan Altima Coupes to drift around the arena at high speeds and do lightning-fast parking jobs in various lineups. The woman announcing would stand in the middle of the arena as the cars would drift close to her.
The next demonstration was a pair of Ford Mustangs driven on two side tires at a precarious lean. Once again, the women in the arena would stand in a row, and the cars would drive close by them while leaned up on two wheels. The crowd went wild for this, and once the performance finished and the intermission began, people from the audience had the opportunity to pay to ride in the car for about a minute while the driver performed the two-wheel lean stunt. In an auto sports-obsessed town, this was a popular part of the event.
The two-hour show included trick jumping with motorcycles and a daring stunt in the Globe of Death. The Globe of Death was a large metal cage that the showrunners put three motorcyclists in to display the scientific principle of centrifugal force. The announcer stood in the middle of the cage while a driver rode around the walls.
The finale of this adrenaline rush included lighting a car on fire and the pièce de resistance, a stunt driver driving a 17-ton semi-truck without a trailer. The driver drifted throughout the area and leaned the large vehicle on two tires by driving up a ramp. The crowd cheered as the driver performed this trick and drove it close to the metal barrier separating the audience from the arena.
To wrap up the event, the announcer stressed that the drivers and riders were professionals who had trained for years to do these stunts safely and that the audience should not try them. A new generation of trick riders may have been inspired by watching the show.
