A daredevil base jumper who once performed onstage at the Super Bowl with Madonna has died in an accident in the US, authorities have confirmed.
Victim Identified
Andy Lewis, 39, was identified as one of two people who died in a base jumping accident over the weekend in Utah Canyon. The extreme athlete was renowned for his base-jumping feats, which involved parachuting to the ground after leaping from tall fixed objects such as buildings, bridges, or desert cliffs overlooking deep canyons.
Reputation in Base Jumping Circles
Within base jumping circles, Lewis had a significant following and a reputation for pushing boundaries. He would leap into tighter spaces or deploy his parachute later than his peers would dare, according to John McEvoy, a base jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who had jumped with Lewis.
"He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice," McEvoy said. "But then he would take an incredible amount of risk."
Super Bowl Appearance
Lewis appeared onstage during Madonna's 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, he bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line as if it were a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.
Accident Details
Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of injured individuals in a base jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff's office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the sheriff's office said in a news release. Sheriff's Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to The Associated Press that Lewis was the extreme athlete who died, but he provided no further details on the fatal accident.
Risks of Base Jumping
Though there is no official tally of base jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website baseaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981, including 30 people killed last year. A study focused on base jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that base jumping carries risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.
Lewis openly acknowledged the sport's inherent danger. "It's weird to think about how many people are dead, because it's like a normal thing," he told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.
Business and Achievements
Lewis owned Base Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, where the customer is harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute. Sheriff's spokesperson Cymbaluk said he did not know if Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.
Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011 and set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China's Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011. In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the Nevada desert.
