The extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident in central Italy.
The Austrian, 56, lost control of his motorised paraglider while flying over Porto Sant’Elpidio in the Marche region on Thursday and fell to the ground into the swimming pool of a hotel.
Several people were in the pool at the time and witnessed his fall, the cause of which is still unclear.
“Everything was normal, then it started to spin like a top,” said 30-year-old Mirella Ivanov, who saw the crash unfold from nearby with her two young children. “It went down and we heard a roar,” she told Associated Press. “In fact, I turned around because I thought it crashed on the rocks.”
Ivanov said she then saw “two lifeguards running, people who were running” toward the crash site. When she saw people trying to revive the occupant, she quickly led her two children away.
Porto Sant’Elpidio’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said reports suggested Baumgartner could have suffered a sudden medical issue mid-air, and offered the town’s condolences over the death of “a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flights”.
The Clube del Sole Le Mimose beachside resort where the crash occurred said in a statement that an employee who was “slightly injured” in the incident was in good condition. No guests were injured, and the pool has been reopened.
Baumgartner, who was known as “Fearless Felix”, made headlines around the world in October 2012 when – wearing a specially made suit – he jumped from a balloon 38km (24 miles) above Earth, becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.
He made the historic jump over Roswell, New Mexico, reaching a peak speed of more than 1,343km/h, during a nine-minute descent on the 65th anniversary of the legendary American pilot Chuck Yeager’s flight shattering the sound barrier on 14 October 1947.
Baumgartner never seemed to fear having to pay the ultimate price for his passion, stressing that it was all about doing your homework. “I hate it if someone calls me a thrillseeker or an adrenaline junkie because I am not. I like the whole planning,” he said before the 2012 stunt.
At one point, Baumgartner went into a potentially dangerous flat spin while still supersonic, spinning for 13 seconds, his crew later said. “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble,” he said after landing in the eastern New Mexico desert. “You do not think about of breaking records any more, you do not think of about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive.”
Sporting a “born to fly” tattoo, Baumgartner, a former Austrian military parachutist, made thousands of daredevil jumps from planes, bridges, skyscrapers and landmarks around the world, including the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The self-styled “God of the Skies” started parachuting as a teenager before taking up the extreme sport of base jumping. Other feats included skydiving across the Channel and parachuting off the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In recent years, he had performed with the Flying Bulls as a helicopter stunt pilot in shows across Europe.
In Austria he was also known for courting controversy with views that included expressing support for dictatorship as a system of government. Baumgartner was fined €1,500 (£1,300) after he punched a Greek truck driver in the face during a 2010 altercation that broke out in a traffic jam near Salzburg.
Dividing his time between Switzerland and the US, Baumgartner eagerly joined the political fray and rubbed shoulders with Austrian far-right politicians. On social media, he mocked the fight against climate breakdown, actively speaking out against Green parties and LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2016, he faced a storm of criticism when suggesting that Hungary’s anti-migration strongman prime minister, Viktor Orbán, should win a Nobel peace prize for protecting his country. Shortly before his death he sparked outrage again with a Facebook post in which he called out the Swiss footballer Alisha Lehmann for her calls to close the gender pay gap.
Baumgartner argued “women don’t have the same audience ratings (as male players) so there’s less money”.
His two childhood dreams were to be a skydiver and a helicopter pilot. “I always had the desire to be in the air,” Austrian media quoted Baumgartner as saying. “I climbed trees, I wanted to see the world from above.”
Baumgartner said after his record-breaking jump in 2012 that travelling faster than sound was “hard to describe because you don’t feel it”. “Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are.”
With Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
