Re: [outrager] Dwaine Weston.
http://www.news.com.au/
has him on the front page and 3 articles in total this is the latest
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Wayward stunt kills thrill seeker
October 6, 2003
AFTER filming his friend's accidental death a year ago, skydiver Dwain Weston knew how he wanted to die.
Weston / AP
Dwain Weston preparing to do a jump just days ago at the Royal Gorge Go Fast games / AP Photo.
The Australian had told friends he didn't want to wither away from old age or illness but wanted to lose his life doing the extreme sport he loved so much.
Tragically, that was the way it happened.
The 30-year-old Boeing computer systems consultant died yesterday in a skydiving mishap in the US.
The former Sydney man and another parachutist had jumped from an aircraft over Colorado's 316m-high Royal Gorge Bridge and were to free fall either side of the bridge before pulling their chutes.
But the extreme sports star and world BASE jumping record holder accidentally miscalculated the distance from the bridge and hit a railing at 160km/h.
He fell on to a rock surface 90m above the bottom of the gorge.
Weston was wearing a "wing suit" with fabric extending below the arms to the body and also between the legs to allow a skydiver to catch the air and travel more horizontally.
But the Royal Gorge is narrow and winds are tricky, an event organiser said.
Within hours, the internet was flooded with sympathy messages from shocked BASE jumpers around the world.
"I really couldn't believe it," jump sponsor Go Fast Sports & Beverage Company vice president Heather Hill said.
"All I ever heard was he was the best in the world and he had skill to do it.
"Of course he always understood the risk and consequences of what he did. He was somewhat of a showman in his sport."
Weston had been living in Portland, Oregon, for a few years before moving to a beach near Los Angeles to be with his skydiving girlfriend and take up a lucrative IT job with Boeing Corporation.
He grew up in Sydney and was an avid surfer before getting into BASE jumping - in which participants jump off buildings, antennas (such as cranes), spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs) - and skydiving.
Weston set many records and won a recent contest for parachuting off the world's tallest office building - the 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Friends yesterday paid tribute to a man they described as a daredevil.
"Last year he was in Switzerland with his good friend and roommate and was filming him when he hit a cliff and died," one friend who asked not to be named said.
"Earlier he tried to revive someone who was injured in a jump and who later died. So he well knew the dangers.
"He said for him he felt they had died
the way he would prefer and, instead of getting old and dying of illness, Dwain's approach was that would be the way to go if it was to happen.
"That's how he rationalised the dangers."
Weston, who had skydived 700 times and BASE-jumped 1100 times in 10 countries, said in a recent interview he needed to stay scared to stay alert.
"If you become a little too relaxed, something could go wrong. You need to stay scared, you need to stay respectful of the sport," he said.
There were about 200 people on the bridge at the time of the accident yesterday.
Weston's family in Sydney were too distraught to comment yesterday.
The Daily Telegraph
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