Parachutist From Olympics Dies in a Jump

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/world/europe/parachutist-from-olympics-dies-in-a-jump.html

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PARIS — Though his name was never widely known, Mark Sutton gained fame last summer in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, when he parachuted from a helicopter, dressed as James Bond, alongside a colleague dressed as Queen Elizabeth II, above a raucous London stadium of 80,000, the real Her Majesty among them.

But his true passion was wingsuit flying — the enchantingly simple if technically daring pursuit that allows people to approximate bird flight — which frequently sent him over the edge of alpine precipices that, for their sheer scale and risk, put the London exploit to shame.

It was one such jump that claimed his life on Thursday, the authorities said, when he struck a mountainside near Trient, Switzerland, at high speed. Mr. Sutton, a former officer in the British Army who, when not tempting fate, was a derivatives consultant at the Royal Bank of Scotland, was 42, according to the police.

He had come to the French mountain resort town of Chamonix, in the shadow of Mont Blanc, at the invitation of the extreme sports television channel Epic TV, according to news reports. Investigators were said to be examining video of the accident, which occurred after Mr. Sutton leapt out of a helicopter hovering at about 11,000 feet.

“The investigation is under way, but it appears that the victim opted for a trajectory that was too close to the ground,” Jean-Marie Bornet, a police spokesman, told Agence France-Presse.

“He died instantly,” Mr. Bornet said, noting that Mr. Sutton had been flying as fast as 150 miles per hour at impact.

In a statement, Danny Boyle, the film director who conceived the Olympic ceremony, described Mr. Sutton as “a gentle and thoughtful man” who was “disciplined and brave in situations most of us would find terrifying.”

In a video Mr. Sutton shot of himself standing atop a mountain just weeks after the London jump last year, he proudly displayed an Olympics T-shirt before zipping up his red wingsuit. After a short countdown, he leaned forward, said, “See you,” and was soon banking and soaring over the dense forest and abrupt rock faces of a massif near the northern Italian town of Riva del Garda.

Later in the year, Mr. Sutton filmed a jump from the Eiger Mushroom, a small boulder balanced airily atop a stone pillar on the edge of the massive Eiger in Switzerland.

After descending over the north face of the mountain, Mr. Sutton released his parachute and touched down in a green field among several friends, hooting in exhilaration.

“These suits are just amazing!” he said.