I suppose they were mindful of the terrible consequences that an encounter with wake vortices would bring. Interesting, amazing, daring, even skilled, and I think unnecessarily reckless.
Every aviator is aware of what tangling with vortices implies. Why do you think ATC ensure landing aircraft have a defined spacing? On your premise that would be "unnecessarily reckless", especially since there are encounters from time to time. Could be fixed by banning all aircraft from landing of course.
I think that the three months they took in planning and briefing this exercise (by professionals) were fully aware of the risks and what was needed to ameliorate those risks.