  Recent calculations of the recoil velocity in binary black hole mergers have
found the kick velocity to be of the order of a few hundred km/s in the case of
non-spinning binaries and about $500 $km/s in the case of spinning
configurations, and have lead to predictions of a maximum kick of up to $1300
$km/s. We test these predictions and demonstrate that kick velocities of at
least $2500 $km/s are possible for equal-mass binaries with anti-aligned spins
in the orbital plane. Kicks of that magnitude are likely to have significant
repercussions for models of black-hole formation, the population of
intergalactic black holes and the structure of host galaxies.
