First it was James Bond, now it is Xander Cage.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Shoalhaven daredevil Robbie Maddison features in the new xXx movie, The Return of Xander Cage, doubling for Vin Diesel in some of the motorcycle sequences, including one in which Diesel rides (or appears to ride) his bike across water.
On his Facebook page Maddison said it was a “pretty big privilege that I got to help stunt co-ordinate and got to double Vin in the latest Xxx film. For the waterbike sequence.
“We had a really good team of guys to help execute this. I'm excited to see what the world thinks of it in a Hollywood film.”
In XXX: Return of Xander Cage, Diesel reprises his role from the original 2002 blockbuster.
The new film imagines that other XXX teams have been formed and brings them together to seize a weapon that could wreak havoc on the world.
Maddison co-ordinated and rode part of the stunt during a bike chase, which started on land but turned into a water pursuit when the bikes sprout skis.
Ultimately the two ski-cycles ride through the barrel of a wave.
The stunt was Maddison’s brainchild, who performed similar moves in his short film Pipe Dream.
The filmmakers asked Maddison to do some of the work off the Dominican Republic coast, with a complicated sequence involving a number of different components.
It's Maddison's second film outing, the first coming in Skyfall, where he performed the bike stunts for Daniel Craig.
His next is in an ad for Ralph Lauren, in which he doubles for Australian actor Luke Bracey, star of the Point Break remake.
He wasn’t the only South Coast rider to be part of the project.
On Maddison’s recommendation, Luke McNeill was also asked to play Vin Diesel's stunt double in the high-octane movie.
In December Maddison bought his water riding skills back to Australia, riding his KTM 450 1.7 kilometres up the Yarra River in Melbourne, reaching an average speed of about 70km/h.
Robbie also played a role in this year’s Big Bash, performing stunts at Melbourne Renegades’ home games.
In 2015, he took his bike to the waves at Teahupoo in Tahiti, in a stunt labelled Robbie Maddison's Pipe Dream.
That Tahiti ride was three years in the planning, but a lifetime in the dreaming.
"I've wanted to do this since I was a little kid," he said.
Even now he's working on a Pipe Dream 2, which he plans to film as soon as conditions are right.
Inspired by Evel Knievel, Maddison holds a number of distance records – including the longest ramp-to-ramp jump and highest jump.
In getting to this stage, he admits to having sunk "a lot of bikes – I couldn't even give you a number. On Triple X we killed 12 bikes", in preparing for the Tahiti ride, he told Wired last year, he sank over 100 times.
And there is no rest for Maddison who takes his passion for bikes even further, but this time to the snow, competing in the BikeCross, a motocross style closed course at the X Games in Aspen.