Daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner dies while paragliding in Italy
Extreme sportsman and adrenaline junkie Felix Baumgartner died on Thursday while paragliding in Italy, local police have confirmed. He was 56.
Baumgartner, a famed BASE jumper and skydiver who was best known for his record-setting jump from the stratosphere down to Earth in 2012, was using his motorized paraglider in Porto Sant’Elpidio when he reportedly became ill and lost control of the craft.
According to TMZ, citing local news outlets, he crashed into a hotel swimming pool and reportedly lost consciousness before going into cardiac arrest. He was declared dead at the scene.
Reports say a woman was struck during the impact. According to local media reports, she is in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.
Five days ago, Baumgartner shared on social media that he was in Italy on holiday. On Wednesday, he posted a video of working on his paraglider.
His final Instagram story, uploaded earlier on Thursday, showed a windsock with an overlay of the words, “Too much wind.”
Baumgartner’s famed hair-raising 2012 jump from the edge of space not only shattered multiple world records, but he also broke the sound barrier, reaching speeds of more than 1,300 km/h.
His jump was recorded from almost 39,000 metres above the Earth’s surface, breaking Joe Kittinger’s record-setting jump of 31,333 metres set in 1960.
The self-styled “God of the Skies” started parachuting as a teenager before taking up the extreme sport of BASE jumping.
His long career of daredevil jumps included skydiving across the English Channel and parachuting off the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.
In his native Austria, he was also known for courting controversy with views that included expressing support for dictatorship as a system of government.
— With files from Reuters
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