March 28, 2024

‘Epic’ Grey Cup footage lost

A friend of B.C. Lions linebacker James Yurichuk is distraught over a recent fumble.

On Monday, Yurichuk and friend Bradley Friesen — who happens to fly helicopters — flew to the top of a mountain and filmed the Canadian linebacker victoriously raising the Grey Cup above his head as the sun set behind him.

But in the celebrations that followed that night, Friesen lost the footage.

“Absolutely the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “They must have fallen out of my pocket.”

To commemorate Yurichuk’s day with the Cup, Friesen strapped cameras to the front and side of his Robinson R44 helicopter and flew 20 minutes into the mountains.

“I landed him on top of a 6,000-foot mountain peak and just got the most epic shots of him holding the cup over his head,” Friesen said yesterday. “Nothing says B.C. like standing on top of a mountain peak with the Grey Cup.”

Yurichuk, part of the 2011 B.C. Lions that won the CFL Championship last week in Vancouver, said standing atop the mountain was one of the scariest things he’d ever done.

“If you slip up at the top there and something goes wrong, that’s the end of it. But the risk was definitely worth it and it’s something no one’s ever done before with the Grey Cup.”

The resulting video footage was better than either of them had envisioned, but when Friesen went to edit the footage Tuesday morning, he realized two of three 16-gigabyte blue SD cards were missing.
Friesen thinks he lost the cards on Monday night at one of a half-dozen downtown bars between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m.

The remaining footage was uploaded as a short film on YouTube, but Friesen said it pales in comparison to the missing clips.

“If there’s anyway we can get it back, we’d like that to happen,” Yurichuk said. “Brad’s offered a free helicopter ride to anyone who returns it, so hopefully that gets it back.”

Anyone who may have found the two SD cards can email greycupcards@gmail.com or tweet @bradleyfriesen. 

Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver

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