A weekend BASE leaping accident in a Utah canyon killed two individuals, certainly one of them a daredevil athlete finest recognized for performing onstage with Madonna on the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities stated.
The sheriff’s workplace in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of many lifeless was Andy Lewis, an excessive athlete recognized for feats in BASE leaping, a harmful sport that entails parachuting to the bottom after leaping from a tall mounted object comparable to a constructing, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.
The victims had been conducting a tandem jump in which two individuals are harnessed collectively, in response to a social media publish by Aerial Arts Moab, an acrobatics firm that described Lewis as “co-owner and best friend.”
Lewis additionally owned BASE Jump Moab, a enterprise that supplied tandem jumps to inexperienced clients who can be harnessed to a information sporting the parachute. Promotional movies on the corporate’s web site present pairs of individuals stepping off the sides of towering cliffs and briefly plummeting earlier than their parachutes open.
In BASE leaping circles, Lewis had an enormous following and a status for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter areas or deploying his parachute later than his friends would dare, stated John McEvoy, a BASE leaping teacher in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.
“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy stated. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins confirmed the opposite one who was killed was Danny Joe Kregle, a 68-year-old father and grandfather who was described by a member of the family as an completed businessman.
“Danny had a wonderful sense of humor and was always looking for ways to make people laugh,” relative Sydney Laverty informed The Times-Independent. “One of his greatest joys was performing magic tricks alongside his granddaughter.”
Lewis was additionally a outstanding determine in the area of interest sports activities of slacklining and tricklining, which mix components of high-wire strolling with aerial acrobatics — typically at perilous heights.
Lewis went from obscure athlete to in a single day superstar when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime present. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tips on his inch-wide line prefer it was a trampoline whereas Madonna sang behind him.
“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis stated quickly afterward in an look on Conan O’Brien’s late night time present.
BASE leaping is standard in Utah; right here vacationers had a harmful mishap with a jump in 2022.
Emergency responders have been dispatched Sunday to a report of individuals injured in a BASE leaping try at Mineral Bottom, a distant desert space close to the Utah-Colorado line, in response to the sheriff’s workplace.
Though there’s no official tally of BASE leaping deaths, an inventory compiled by the web site BASEaddict.com reveals 540 whole fatalities worldwide since 1981 — together with 30 individuals killed final yr. Prominent deaths embrace BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing companion, Graham Hunt, who have been killed in 2015 whereas trying a wingsuit flight in California’s Yosemite National Park.
A research targeted on BASE jumping in Norway, revealed in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE leaping carried dangers of damage or demise 5 to eight occasions larger than skydiving.
Lewis overtly acknowledged the game’s inherent hazard.
“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis informed documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview revealed final yr.
Tandem BASE leaping carries further threat as a result of it straps collectively two individuals, certainly one of whom typically lacks expertise, beneath a single parachute, McEvoy stated. But as a result of they contain novices, additionally they are typically probably the most low-risk, fundamental forms of jumps.
“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy stated. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”
No one instantly returned telephone, textual content and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.
Lewis gained 4 straight world championships in aggressive slacklining from 2008 by way of 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline browsing, swaying his toes facet to facet in a rocking movement that mimics browsing, whereas conserving his steadiness above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.
In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two sizzling air balloons greater than 4,000 toes (1,200 meters) above the Nevada desert.
This story has been up to date with further info.