Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil who made a record-breaking parachute jump from the stratosphere in 2012, died Thursday in a paragliding accident in Italy, a local mayor confirmed. Firefighters who responded to the scene said they found a paraglider that had crashed into the side of a swimming pool in the city of Porto Sant Elpidio, on central Italy’s eastern coast.
“Our community is deeply affected by the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a figure of global prominence, a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flight,” the town’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said on Facebook. Ciarpella told The Associated Press that the extreme athlete had been in the area on vacation.
Witnesses told The Associated Press they heard a loud boom as the paraglider spun out of control. Mirella Ivanov, 30, told AP she was in the area with her two young children when they saw the paraglider lose control.
“Everything was normal, then it started to spin like a top,” Ivanov said Friday. “It went down and we heard a roar. In fact, I turned around because I thought it crashed on the rocks.”
Baumgartner, 56, made global headlines in 2012 when he was lifted into the stratosphere, about 24 miles up, in a capsule carried by a helium balloon, and then parachuted down to a landing in New Mexico. During the jump, he broke the record for fastest free fall, descending at about 843.6 mph and becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without the assistance of a vehicle.
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Originally from Austria, Baumgartner began skydiving at age 16 and further honed his skills in the Austrian military, according to his personal website. In 1988, he teamed up with Red Bull, which sponsored the stratosphere jump under the Stratos project and many other daring feats.
The training and planning for the 2012 Stratos jump took five years. Among the records Baumgartner would break that day was highest jump, which had been held by Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger since 1960, when he leapt from an open-air gondola basket that rose to 102,000 feet. Kittinger would go on to train Baumgartner for the record-breaking Stratos jump. (Baumgartner’s height record was broken two years later.)
In addition to skydiving, Baumgartner was an accomplished BASE jumper, breaking two records in 1999: highest BASE jump and lowest BASE jump. The low jump, which he took from one of the hands of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, was only 95 feet. The high jump was taken from the 88th floor of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, although that record has since been broken and is currently held by the late Valery Rozov, who jumped from Cho Oyu in 2016.
Baumgartner was also a helicopter pilot and was part of Red Bull’s aerial acrobatics team.
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“Ever since I was a child, I have always wanted to jump out of a plane,” Baumgartner told Red Bull in an interview after becoming a licensed helicopter pilot.
“For Red Bull Stratos, we had a very long list of ‘what ifs,’ in other words eventualities that could happen and how we would deal with them in an emergency. The list kept getting longer and longer. I was only afraid of the things that were not on the list. The things we had not thought of,” he told Red Bull, adding: “To this day, I abort missions if the conditions are not right.”
While Baumgartner’s stunts inspired millions, his political views were known to cause controversy. On social media, he mocked climate activists and others who sought to limit the effects of climate change, and voiced opposition to LGBTQ rights, according to the AFP news agency. He also once suggested Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-immigration policies.
