It looks like they’re actually tier 1 (they seem to be standing on a white platform), but what, if any, weight is each layer above them? I can see narrow platforms, but are they all taking most of the weight?
I’m not sure whether this was meant as an athletic or purely aesthetic display – since they’re billed as ‘acrobats’, I assumed skill was involved, so what would be the best and worst case scenario those 8-10 in the narrowest tier would be supporting?
e: was there any kind of structural support in this? I’m not finding much about it.
Here’s a Snopes article about this event at the 1980s Olympics in Moscow.
As said by many, there’s a hidden structure that supports everyone here. So every athlete is only supporting themselves.
If you want to see people supporting each other in a tower structure search for Catalonian Castells.
Yep these are insane, and really dangerous.
They are not so dangerous, in more than 200 years there are only 5 deaths documented as of 2016 1 (I can’t find a more recent source), and as of 2023 there were 79 potentially severe lesions for 5337 castells 2.