Roberta Mancino: The Beaut Behind the Suit

Angels really do have wings. We’ve talked about Roberta Mancino a lot. If only there was a compilation of Mancino videos out there where you could learn all there is to know about the world’s sexiest athlete. Oh wait, ESPN’s E:60 has done just that. In a video seemingly made up of stolen Blades clips, the sports video archive has profiled the incredible wingsuit star. At first an international model, Mancino was looking for more in life and decided to push her physical limits and release all of her adrenaline by becoming an extreme athlete (extremely sexy, that is).

After first paragliding at 19 and taking her first skydive at 21, she’s been in love with the sport and the danger, even breaking 6 free-fly formation records (3 world, 2 European and 1 Italian) in the 7000+ skydives she’s performed. This angel of the skies was the national champion of freestyle skydiving for several years and has base jumped 120 times (about 35 of which with the wingsuit). She’s also skydived naked, but that was just for me not for any records. Now, we can talk about records and titles all we want but what really captures the essence of “fly girl” is the video montage of skydives, base jumps and wingsuiting provided and edited beautifully by Evolve IMG Films. Her wingsuiting, of course, wasn’t perfected until she started dating none other than Jeb Corliss, our favorite bald wingsuiter. He introduced her to close-parameter wingsuiting (gliding crazy close to things like mountains and cliffs) and together they’ve wingsuited alongside mountains, base jumped off dangerous heights not meant for base-jumping, and swam with threatening sharks that are more afraid of the couple than they are of them. E:60 has profiled Mancino perfectly, even getting the fact that she uses her modeling to fund her adventures and will only stop when she feels that she’s done it all. Roberta is an athlete first and a model second. That is what sets her apart and that is why she’s a BladesMag feature.