A skydiver who set multiple world records after jumping from the stratosphere in 2012 died as he was paragliding in Italy this week.
Felix Baumgartner, 56, was paragliding in the Italian town of Porto Sant’Elpidio on Thursday when he crashed into a wooden structure next to a swimming pool at a beachside resort on the Adriatic Sea.
“Everything was normal, then it started to spin like a top. It went down and we heard a roar. In fact, I turned around because I thought it crashed on the rocks. Then I saw two lifeguards running,” Mirella Ivanov told The Associated Press.
The mayor of Porto Sant’Elpidio, Massimiliano Ciarpella, wrote on Facebook that Mr. Baumgartner died from a “fatal illness,” as translated from Italian, though the mayor did not specify what the illness was or how it caused Mr. Baumgartner to crash.
A woman working at the resort was struck by debris and suffered a non-life-threatening injury, reported Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Mr. Baumgartner went up into the stratosphere in 2012 in a balloon and took his record-breaking leap. The stratosphere is the layer of the Earth’s atmosphere used by commercial passenger aircraft.
He fell as fast as 1.25 times the speed of sound, going 843.6 mph. That made him the first person to free fall faster than the speed of sound, according to Guinness World Records, and he set the record for fastest-ever free fall.
By jumping at an elevation of 127,852 feet, he also set the record for highest free-fall parachute jump, according to Guinness.
“You always sought out the greatest challenges and mastered them with sharp thinking, relentless precision and a good dose of courage. … You will stay with us as a colleague, a loyal companion, but most of all as a friend. Thank you, Felix. For everything,” Red Bull, which sponsored the stratosphere jump as well as many others, wrote in a post on its website Thursday.
