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What Is KL Tower BASE Organiser Aziz Ahmad's Real Level Of BASE Jumping Experience?

Many years ago Aziz estimated the number of BASE jumps he had completed to be about 400. That number that has been listed on Aziz’s bio for many years. But now after 20 years of BASE jumping, this number is still believed to be well overstated. So what is Aziz’s real level of experience?

It is quite common for Malaysian BASE jumpers to greatly overstate their level of BASE jumping experience. Malaysians tend to lie more about their true level of BASE jumping experience than anyone else in the world. While Aziz was being queried about the experience of another Malaysian BASE jumper that he had colluded with to try to give false verification of the BASE jumpers overstated experience, Aziz agreed that most Malaysians greatly exaggerate their BASE jumping experience. He suggested that the number of BASE jumps most Malaysian BASE jumpers claim to have needs to be at least halved to get a more realistic idea of their experience. Some Malaysian BASE jumpers have been known try to overstate their BASE jumping experience by a factor 4 or even 10 in the past. Other BASE jumpers need to be very cautious when jumping with Malaysian BASE jumpers and not assume that they have a level of skill in line with the hugely inflated number of BASE jumps they claim to have. While many Malaysian BASE jumpers do overstate their experience, there are some that actually are honest about their level of BASE jumping experience.

For Aziz to have accomplished 400 BASE jumps over 20 years is not unreasonable. That works out to be only 20 BASE jumps per year, which any BASE jumper should be able to easily achieve. Many of the top performing BASE jumpers do well over 20 jumps in a single day of jumping at Malaysian BASE jumping events. However, 400 BASE jumps spread over 20 years is considered a reasonably low level of experience. A BASE jumper that has completed 400 BASE jumps over 2 or 3 years would generally have a far superior and much more tuned skillset.

But Aziz’s real level of BASE jumping experience is believed much lower than 400 BASE jumps. A more realistic number of BASE jumps that Aziz has completed would be around 200 BASE jumps. That would only be an average of 10 BASE jumps per year, which is hardly enough to even maintain a basic skill set.

So how was this figure of 200 BASE jump derived?

The estimate of 200 BASE jumps was calculated primarily from past Malaysian BASE jumping event records, and also from knowing Aziz’s jumping habits over the last 20 years. Aziz’s BASE jumping during events was always minimal, and his BASE jumping outside of events was even less.

Aziz did his first BASE jump in 1999 at KL Tower. He would have been given a crash course on BASE jumping and only learnt the bare basics to survive.

With just a few BASE jumps experience Aziz was excelled into jumping at the 2000 Petronas New Years Eve display jump.

Larger international BASE jumping events started in Malaysian at KL Tower in 2001, but the initial event was just 1 day of jumping. Also at the end of 2001 Petronas Twin Towers hosted their first BASE jumping competition. By the end of these events Aziz would probably have had a total of about 10 BASE jumps.

In 2002 KL Tower expanded their event to include 1 day of BASE jumping at Alor Setar Tower, and 1 day of BASE jumping at KL Tower. Petronas Twin Towers also hosted a competition event at the end of the year, which expanded to include an aerials section of the competition at KL Tower. By the end of these events Aziz most likely had a total of close to 30 BASE jumps.

No KL Tower event took place in 2003. There was a Petronas Twin Towers event, but it is uncertain if Aziz attended that.

In 2005 the original BASE Jumping organisers of the KL Tower event discontinued their involvement with it. Aziz would be appointed co-organiser of the KL Tower event, along with experienced Australian BASE Jump Association President, Gary Cunningham. At the time Gary had completed about 1000 BASE jumps and had done more BASE jumps off the Malaysian event buildings than anyone else in the world. While Aziz’s BASE jumping experience was ultra low for this position, he was of immense help interfacing BASE organiser Gary Cunningham with Malaysian culture and KL Tower management. Aziz appointed himself as President of the Malaysian BASE Association, which was a one-person organisation. With an extended number of days at KL Tower and Alor Star Tower in 2005 Aziz completed the total of 22 BASE jumps. It is a fair assumption that Aziz would have had a total of around 60 BASE jumps by the end of the 2005 BASE jumping events.

2007 was Aziz most active year in BASE jumping. The Malaysian BASE jumping tour expanded to 6 buildings and Aziz completed 29 BASE jumps during the series of events. This would bring Aziz's total number of BASE jumps up to about 100.

In 2008 Aziz completed at least 1 jump off Gua Damai with highly experienced Canadian BASE jumper Martin Dumas, who had co-founded the KL Tower event with Aziz in 1999. These were the first known jumps that anyone has done off that cliff. But Aziz’s jumping would soon be halted for the rest of the year. A light aircraft Aziz was piloting had engine trouble just after take-off. He crash landed it and the plane caught on fire. Aziz spent several weeks in hospital with very badly burnt legs.

Aziz resumed BASE jumping in 2009. He did 1 or more test jumps earlier in the year at Wisma Sanyan in Sibu. In 2009 and 2010 KL Tower took over organising their own events, with another novice Malaysian BASE jumper that started working at KL Tower full-time. In desperation to get BASE jumpers to attend the event, entry experience requirements were slashed to effectively zero. This inevitably lead to many serious incidents and a death in 2010.

No records were kept when KL Tower took over organising their own events in 2009 and 2010, however it is believed Aziz would have done very few jumps during this time. He did very few jumps at Alor Setar Tower in 2010 after the fatality, and would have also done very little at KL Tower in 2010 when he was put back in charge of that. Aziz did 8 jumps in Sibu in 2010.

During Aziz’s first decade of BASE jumping he most likely completed about 130 BASE jumps. For the next decade Aziz's BASE jumping slowed down, as KL Tower cut their big tour of events. Only the KL Tower and Sibu BASE jumping events remained. Gua Damai was also open to jump year round.

In 2011 Aziz did a total of 10 BASE jumps in Sibu and at KL Tower. But all the other years he has completed well under 10 jumps. 3 BASE jumps in 2012. 1 BASE jumps in 2013. 3 BASE jumps in 2014. 3 BASE jumps in 2015. 6 BASE jumps in 2016. 7 BASE jumps in 2017.

In 2018 Aziz did 4 BASE jumps in Sibu. It is unknown how many Base jumps you did at KL Tower in 2018 in 2019 as other organisers took over the event.

Adding in a few jumps that Aziz has done at Gua Damai, and a few other jumps Aziz may have done at other locations, 200 BASE jumps would be a reasonable estimate for Aziz’s 20 years of BASE jumping.

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