The Austrian extreme sports athlete Felix Baumgartner, who made himself known on a planetary scale in 2012 after having jumped from the stratosphere to planet Earth, died Thursday in Italy in a paragliding incident in Porto Sant’elpidio.
According to local media, the 56 -year -old man lost consciousness during his flight, and finished his race against the structure of the outdoor swimming pool of a hotel complex.
A young hotel employee was slightly injured.
A few hours earlier, Baumgartner had published a photo on Instagram on which the legend indicated: “Too much wind”.
Red Bull’s energy drinks, which has ordered several of Baumgartner’s exploits over the years, has confirmed its death to the Australian Public Télodifuser ORF.
Born in Salzburg in 1969, Baumgartner hit the headlines on multiple times by making spectacular jumps from the summits of iconic structures, such as the Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, and the statue of Christ, in Rio de Janeiro;
In October 2012, he marked the spirits by propeling himself with a helium ball located 39 kilometers above the earth. During his descent, he reached a speed of 1,342 km/h, breaking the sound barrier.
Baumgartner said that his training for the Red Bull Stratos jump, finished smoothly in the state of the state of the New Mexico in the United States, had started 26 years earlier, in 1986, when he had jumped for the first time from a parachute plane.
He had already described his passion for strong emotions by claiming: “My place in this life is in the air. I was born for these emotions. »»
