Nik Wallenda

His ancestors were primarily of German descent and have been circus performers since the 1700s; they have been doing balancing acts without nets since Karl Wallenda made the family famous for the feat in the 1920s.

Nik Wallenda is a great-grandson of Karl, whom he calls his role model and his "biggest hero in life".

Several members of the family have died while training or performing.

In 1962, the troupe's famous seven-person pyramid collapsed, killing two family members and paralyzing Wallenda's uncle Mario.

In 1978, his great-grandfather Karl Wallenda died after falling from a tight rope at age 73 in Puerto Rico.

Nikolas Wallenda (born January 24, 1979) is an American acrobat, aerialist, daredevil, high wire artist, and author.

He is known for his high-wire performances without a safety net.

He holds 11 Guinness World Records for various acrobatic feats, and is best known as the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.

Wallenda was born in Sarasota, Florida on January 24, 1979 to Delilah Wallenda and Terry Troffer.

His parents bought him a swing set when he was two.

Before Troffer had even finished assembling it, Wallenda climbed up to the crossbar and did a somersault.

Around the same time, he began performing with his family in their circus act.

His first public performance was at SeaWorld San Diego in 1981.

He began to play on the wire at age two, walking back and forth while holding his mother's hand.

At age four, he started walking the wire on his own, learning primarily from his father.

He would play on his parents' practice wire with his older sister Lijana, Two Feet off the ground.

His parents would throw objects at him as he practiced, and even shot him with a BB gun to train him to deal with distractions.

He made his professional tightrope walking debut at the age of 13, and he chose high-wire walking as his career in 1998 after joining family members in a seven-person pyramid on the wire.

In 2001, he was part of the world's first eight-person high-wire pyramid.

He performed with his family at various venues from 2002 to 2005, forming his own troupe in 2005.

He performed with Bello Nock in 2007 and 2008 in a double version of the Wheel of Steel that he helped invent.

In 2008, while performing with Ringling Bros., Wallenda set Guinness World Records for longest and highest bicycle ride on a high-wire 250 ft at 135 ft above the ground in New Jersey.

In 2009, he set new personal bests for highest and longest tightrope walks, completing a total of 15 walks above 100 ft in the air that year.

He nearly doubled the height record in 2010 to 260 ft. On the same day in 2010, he upped his personal best by tightrope walking over 2000 ft in a single performance.

He set a world record in 2011 by performing on the Wheel of Death atop the 23 story Tropicana Casino and Resort.

Later that year, he and his mother tightrope walked between the two towers of Condado Plaza Hotel in Puerto Rico.

The feat was a re-creation of the one that killed Karl Wallenda, Nik's great-grandfather and primary source of inspiration.

On June 10, 2011, Wallenda hung from a helicopter 250 ft off the ground using only his toes to hold on.

Some time after that, he walked on top of a turning Ferris wheel at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in California.

Wallenda crossed Niagara Falls on June 15, 2012 on a live ABC special, following a two-year legal battle involving both sides of the Canada–United States border to gain approval.

He was required to wear a safety harness for the first time in his life.

A reality show aired on the Science Channel which followed his feats.

In 2013, he released a memoir entitled Balance.

He became the first person to high-wire walk across the Grand Canyon on June 23, 2013.

The feat aired live on the Discovery Channel breaking rating records for the network.

He followed that up with Skyscraper Live, a live Discovery special that aired on November 2, 2014, in which he completed two tightrope walks and set two new Guinness World Records: one for walking the steepest tightrope incline over 600 ft up between two skyscrapers, and the other for the highest tightrope walk while blindfolded.

Wallenda is married with three children, and considers his Christian faith to be a central aspect of his life.

Wallenda is a seventh-generation member of The Flying Wallendas family of aerialists.

Wallenda walked 1,800 ft on a steel cable over Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua, his longest walk, on March 4, 2020.

Wallenda is a 7th-generation member of The Flying Wallendas family, and he participated in various circus acts as a child.