In the chilly skies above Russia’s countryside, extreme sports guy Sergey Boytsov just pushed the limits again. Yesterday, on December 2, 2025, this 30-year-old bodybuilder and daredevil pulled off a wild soccer game on a small fake grass field hanging under a hot air balloon at about 1,800 meters that’s roughly 5,900 feet up. There were four players strapped in with harnesses, kicking the ball around while dealing with light breezes, and a plane buzzing around to keep an eye on things and film it all.
A tweet from X.
You can see it in this short 18-second video that went viral on X, posted by Collin Rugg (post ID: 1995987807194812861), showing the platform rocking a bit, the ball bouncing on the turf, and the huge green fields way down below. Boytsov, who’s from Klin outside Moscow, says it’s the first time anyone’s done this, and it got stamped by the Ingenious Charm World Records (ICWR), which handles offbeat stuff like this.
“We nailed a new world record,”
He posted on his Instagram (@sergeyboytcov).
“First ever football match under a hot air balloon at 1800 meters.”
Checking around, the video lines up with what Boytsov shared himself, racking up over half a million views on X alone. Places like NDTV and The Indian Express have stories that match, talking about the safety nets on the platform and the plane watching over everything. No obvious fakes here no weird shadows or impossible moves. That said, the “world record” is kinda his own call Guinness has official ones way higher, like a game at 5,714 meters on Mount Kilimanjaro back in 2017, or even 6,166 meters in a zero-gravity plane flight in 2022. ICWR, started in 2017, does niche records but isn’t as strict as Guinness.
This fits right into Boytsov’s crazy 2025 run of sky-high stunts, all without parachutes to crank up the danger. He did a boxing match in March at 1,600 meters, backed by the Russian Boxing Federation, and some gymnastics on a bar at 1,500 meters in June.
“It’s all about trusting each other one bad move, and it messes everyone up,”
He mentioned about the prep, which took months of ground-level practice and training for low oxygen.
Russia’s got this big extreme sports scene, with wide-open spaces and not too many rules holding people back. Boytsov’s past as a base jumper he jumped off Europe’s tallest building, the Lakhta Center, in 2023 keeps him chasing these thrills. For the soccer bit, they used a 5×3-meter field with tiny goals, and the whole setup needed flight permits and a crew on the ground. The players, all adventure buddies in full gear, had to handle the thin air and the platform tilting up to 20 degrees, hanging on with those harnesses.
Safety’s a big deal, even if it’s nuts. Up there, oxygen’s low, so you could get dizzy easy, but the video doesn’t show any mishaps. Boytsov brags about no insurance, which raises eyebrows, but the straps look solid against falls. On X, folks are split some love it, like
“INSANE, humans beating gravity,”
Others joke,
“Dumbest soccer game ever.”
A lot question if the record’s legit, since Guinness is tougher.
From a news angle, it shows how sports stunts are blowing up online, where going viral matters more than official stamps sometimes. RT covered his gymnastics one with 81,000 views, and it’s part of how social media lets anyone get famous but makes checking facts harder. Outlets like Sky News talk about this trend in wild content, stressing clear safety rules.
