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 News from Around the Americas | September 2006 
Man Who Pushed the Limits Dies in Mexican Jump
 David Braithwaite - Sydney Morning Herald
| | Adam Gibson... lived his dream. |
In May, Adam Gibson threw in his job, sold his house and left Sydney to live his dream of leaping from cliffs and buildings around the world.
Yesterday the 29-year-old BASE jumper, who was known to "push the extremes", died after plunging off an 800-metre cliff in southern Mexico, local officials said.
Mr Gibson, from Darlington, slammed into a wall of the Sumidero canyon in Chiapas state before plunging into a river below. It was unclear if his parachute malfunctioned.
In a profile on his sponsor's website, Mr Gibson described his motivation in life as "having fun and pushing myself in everything I do".
"I guess you could say I live and breathe BASE jumping."
The president of the Australian BASE Association, Gary Cunningham, said Mr Gibson had been jumping for a few years and had quickly excelled.
However, the relative novice had a hunger for "jumping at the higher end of the extreme" that caused Mr Cunningham to worry.
"The jumps he was doing were quite advanced - I always found myself warning him to careful," he said.
"He was a super-nice guy - he always talked like he was careful, but he liked excelling in everything he did."
He said Mr Gibson had been "going fairly hard" in past months, adding to his tally of 400 jumps with more than 100 in Europe and 30 in Malaysia.
"That should have boosted his skills up a lot, too - maybe he was too confident," he said.
Mr Gibson had been married and had sold his house before setting off on a nine-month jumping tour of the world, Mr Cunningham said.
The Chiapas newspaper Cuarto Poder said more than 25 BASE jumpers from Australia, the United States, Europe and Mexico had gathered at Sumidero for the Go Fast Games, which are sponsored by a US energy drink company.
BASE is an acronym for building, antenna, span and earth - a rundown of the kind of lofty perches from which the sport's daredevils jump with specially designed parachutes.
Mr Gibson is the second Australian to have been killed in a BASE jumping accident in less than four months.
On May 27, Tony Coombes, 30, from southern Queensland, was killed after jumping from a 1100-metre cliff in Norway.
Mr Coombes slammed into a cliff after leaping from the popular BASE jumping site Trollveggen, which means Troll Wall. In July last year, an Adelaide jumper, Darcy Zoitsas, 39, died in a jump off the 1000-metre Kjerag Peak, also in Norway.
with AAP |
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