THIS IS the moment a Hampshire sailor took walking in the air to a whole new extreme.

Alex Thomson is known for his daredevil antics taking to the skies or seas in terrifying, death-defying stunts.

Now the round-the-world sailor from Gosport has flown through the air in style with a skywalking challenge.

His latest stunt sees Alex looking dapper in a suit and standing on a kiteboard attached to his Hugo Boss yacht by a cord.

Using the wind he propels himself 280ft into the air to then detach himself from the cord and ‘walk’ through the sky, before expertly navigating the wind to surf back down to the sea.

It’s the 41-year-old from Gosport’s third stunt, this time using his IMOCA open 60 HUGO BOSS boat and footage of the challenge sees him soaring the equivalent height of a 25 storey building.

Alex’s love of pushing himself to the limit has previously seen him complete a Mastwalk, where he climbed a 30 metre mast and then dive from the top into the water as well as the Keelwalk, where he walked along the orange keel of his yacht while sailing at high speed.

Both these stunts have attracted more than 4.5million views on YouTube and Alex said he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

He said: “The previous two stunts that we carried out were so successful that, as a team, we just knew we couldn’t stop there. We were all in agreement we wanted to do something even bigger and better.

“I’ve always had a love for all things wind-powered so naturally a stunt which involved kite surfing was the next step. The idea of combining two of my favourite sports and executing something which, to our knowledge, had never been done before was really exciting.

“The team and I have been planning the stunt for a long time. There were lots of things that could have gone wrong. Perhaps most concerning for the team was the prospect of an uncontrolled descent, causing me to come back down too fast. Water can be as hard as concrete if hit with enough velocity, so this was one of the most dangerous aspects of the stunt. But I had a brilliant team around me and with their help we managed to pull it off.

“What’s next? Who knows?”

The Skywalk was organised by Alex Thomson Racing, in partnership with sponsors HUGO BOSS and Mercedes-Benz.

A team of 35 people were involved in the planning, co-ordination and execution of the stunt, including Alex Thomson Racing Operations Manager Ross Daniel, professional kite-surfer Susi Mai and kite-surfing coach Ray Kasper. Now solo skipper Alex will be hoping to beat his third place finish and become the first British sailor to win the Vendée Globe later this year.

The non-stop, solo, unassisted, round the world race takes around 80 days to complete and Alex previously competed in the race in 2013.

He will be joining some of the best sailors in the world for the race which starts on November 6.