Austrian extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner has died in a paragliding accident in central Italy.<\/p>\n
The 56-year-old, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, lost control of his paraglider while flying over Porto Sant’Elpidio in Italy’s central Marche region on Thursday, local police said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Police said Baumgartner fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel.<\/p>\n
The reasons for the accident remain unclear.<\/p>\n
The local mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said reports suggested he may have suffered a sudden medical issue mid-air.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Ciarpella offered the town’s condolences for the death of “a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flights”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon 38km above Earth in 2012.\u00a0 (Reuters: Red Bull Stratos\/Supplied\u00a0)<\/p>\n
Jump from the stratosphere<\/p>\n
The Austrian made headlines around the world in October 2012 when he jumped from a balloon 38 kilometres above Earth, becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier, typically measured at more than 1,110 kilometres per hour.<\/p>\n
He made the historic jump over Roswell, New Mexico, reaching a peak speed of over 1,343kph, on the 65th anniversary of legendary American pilot Chuck Yeager’s flight shattering the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.<\/p>\n
The self-styled “God of the Skies” started parachuting as a teenager before taking up the extreme sport of base jumping.<\/p>\n
His long career of daredevil jumps included skydiving across the English Channel and parachuting off the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
In Austria, he was also known for courting controversy with views that included expressing support for dictatorship as a system of government.<\/p>\n
Baumgartner was fined 1,500 euros after he punched a Greek truck driver in the face during a 2010 altercation that broke out in a traffic jam near Salzburg.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Austrian base jumper Felix Baumgartner had a long career of daredevil jumps. (Reuters: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austrian extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner has died in a paragliding accident in central Italy. The 56-year-old, famed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,1300,2326,2328,2327,2329,2330,85],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-death","tag-felix-baumgartner","tag-italy","tag-paraglider","tag-porto-s-elpidio","tag-record-breaking","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}