Felix
Baumgartner
Austria
·
Aerobatic Flying
Date of birth | 20 April 1969 |
|---|---|
Place of birth | Salzburg, Austria |
Age | 56 |
Nationality | Austria |
Career start | 1988 |
Disciplines | Aerobatic airshows / B.A.S.E. Jumping |
Now well over a decade on from October 14, 2012, one of the first moments of global virality in the digital age, Felix Baumgartner's achievement feels no less inspiring.
After stepping from his specially built capsule, Baumgartner plunged at a top speed of 1,357.6kph and broke three world records in the process: the highest freefall, highest crewed balloon flight and first person to travel faster than the speed of sound in freefall.
And yet, there was so much more to him than that single stratospheric achievement. The Austrian’s career took in many memorable moments as a parachutist, BASE jumper, race car driver and as a commercial and aerobatic helicopter pilot.
As a child growing up in Salzburg, he was initially inspired by watching astronauts on television. He had two life goals: to become a skydiver and to fly a helicopter. Even as an icon of the two pursuits, he seemed surprised that he managed to fulfil both.
A skydiver from the age of 16, piloting a helicopter seemed nothing more than a pipedream. The son of a carpenter father and housewife mother, there simply wasn’t the money to bankroll lessons – until, that is, his skills as a skydiver earned him the means to pursue the second of those ambitions.
As he recalled, “It’s interesting that one childhood dream put me in a situation to make the other childhood dream work. Without the first, I never could have done it. I was a mechanic repairing motorcycles and you don’t make enough money repairing motorcycles to fly helicopters.”
Long before he was tumbling through space, Baumgartner was a renowned parachutist, first for the Austrian military and later for Red Bull. In 1999, he leapt from the Petronas Towers, claiming a world record for the highest parachute jump, and in 2003 he flew across the English Channel with a specially made carbon-fibre wing.
The record-breaking feats continued apace – 14 of them in all – including in 2011, when he managed the world’s lowest BASE jump from the hand of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Along the way, he received all manner of awards, from being named a Living Legend of Aviation to taking the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and a Laureus Sports award.
No matter what incredible things Felix Baumgartner achieved on the ground or in the air, he’s best known for his Red Bull Stratos jump – and that's what people will always remember him for. The way he used to put it into perspective still resonates perfectly: “Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are.”