Rick Sylvester | |
---|---|
Born | April 3, 1942 |
Occupation(s) | Climber, Stuntman |
Known for | BASE jumping |
Rick Sylvester (born April 3, 1942) is an American climber and former stuntman, most famous for his BASE jumping using skis and a Union Jack parachute from Mount Asgard in Canada for the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me in July 1976. [1] [2]
In 1971, he skied off the top of El Capitan in California and descended approximately 914 metres (3000 feet) by parachute. This was conceived as "the world's greatest ski jump". [3] There were two more jumps made in secrecy to avoid arrest by the National Park Service; Sylvester wanted more footage shot from different angles. These jumps were made in 1972 and 1973. Already an expert skier, he spent three weeks learning sky diving to make this jump. Sylvester also worked in another Bond film, For Your Eyes Only , where he did the stunt when Bond falls off the side of a mountain he is climbing in Meteora, Greece.[ citation needed ]
In 1978, Sylvester, along with famed mountaineer Jim Bridwell, helped rescue approximately 40 people trapped in a ski tram in blizzard conditions. A 17-ton cable that supported the tram had come free and sliced through the tram car, killing several tourists. Sylvester, Bridwell, and others set up a pulley system on-the-fly to free the survivors and lower them to safety. [4]
BASE jumping is the recreational sport of jumping from fixed objects, using a parachute to descend safely to the ground. "BASE" is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs). Participants exit from a fixed object such as a cliff, and after an optional freefall delay, deploy a parachute to slow their descent and land. A popular form of BASE jumping is wingsuit BASE jumping.
Bungee jumping, also spelled bungy jumping, is an activity that involves a person jumping from a great height while connected to a large elastic cord. The launching pad is usually erected on a tall structure such as a building or crane, a bridge across a deep ravine, or on a natural geographic feature such as a cliff. It is also possible to jump from a type of aircraft that has the ability to hover above the ground, such as a hot-air-balloon or helicopter. The thrill comes from the free-falling and the rebound. When the person jumps, the cord stretches and the jumper flies upwards again as the cord recoils, and continues to oscillate up and down until all the kinetic energy is dissipated.
Michael David Edwards, better known as Eddie the Eagle, is an English ski jumper and Olympian who in 1988 became the first competitor to represent Great Britain in Olympic ski jumping, finishing last in the Normal Hill and Large Hill events. He held the British ski jumping record from 1988 to 2001. He also took part in amateur speed skiing, running at 106.8 km/h (66.4 mph), and became a stunt jumping world record holder for jumping over 6 buses.
Victor Monroe Armstrong is a British film director, stunt coordinator, second unit director, and stunt double—the world's most prolific, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
Allan John "A. J." Hackett is a New Zealand entrepreneur who popularised the extreme sport of bungy jumping. He made a bungy jump from the Eiffel Tower in 1987 and founded the first commercial bungy site in 1988. He is also the father of freestyle skier, Margaux Hackett.
Mount Asgard is a twin peaked mountain with two flat-topped, cylindrical, rock towers, separated by a saddle. It is located in Auyuittuq National Park, on the Cumberland Peninsula of Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. The peak is named after Asgard, the realm of the Æsir (gods) in Norse mythology. Mount Asgard is perhaps the most famous of the Baffin Mountains.
Leslie Leroy Irvin was a stunt-man for the fledgling Californian film industry. Flying in balloons, he performed using trapeze acrobatics and parachute descents. For the 1914 film Sky High, Irvin made his first jump out of an airplane while flying at 1,000 feet above the ground. In 1918, he developed his own life-saving static line parachute, jumping with it several times and promoting it to the US Army. Irvin joined the Army Air Service's parachute research team at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio where he made the first premeditated free-fall jump with the modern parachute on April 28, 1919.
Edward Kidd is an English former stunt performer. He was paralysed and suffered brain damage following an accident in 1996. On 15 June 2012 it was announced that he had been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to charity.
Steve Truglia was a stunt coordinator, stunt performer and action unit director in the UK. He became a TED speaker in 2009. Truglia died while attempting to abseil from a helicopter.
The Devil at Your Heels is a 1981 documentary that chronicles the attempt of the stuntman and daredevil Ken Carter to jump a rocket-powered car over the Saint Lawrence River, a distance of one mile.
The Spy Who Loved Me is a 1977 spy film, the tenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is the third to star Roger Moore as the fictional secret agent James Bond. The film co-stars Barbara Bach and Curt Jürgens and was directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay was by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum, with an uncredited rewrite by Tom Mankiewicz.
For Your Eyes Only is a 1981 spy film directed by John Glen and produced by Albert R. Broccoli. The film stars Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, and co-stars Carole Bouquet, Chaim Topol, Lynn-Holly Johnson and Julian Glover.
Hilder Florentina Youngberg Smith was an aerial acrobat, parachutist, and pioneer aviator. She was one of California's first female pilots and the first woman to fly an airplane from LAX. Hilder was a member of a flying aerial team called The Flying Sylvesters.
James Floyd Smith was an inventor, aviation pioneer, and parachute manufacturer. With borrowed money, he built, then taught himself to fly his own airplane.
Parachuting and skydiving is a method of transiting from a high point in the atmosphere to the surface of Earth with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or parachutes.
Films made in the 1970s featuring the character of James Bond included Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker.
Films made in the 1980s featuring the character of James Bond included For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Never Say Never Again, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, and Licence to Kill. The decade featured 3 Bond actors Roger Moore, Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton. The 1980s were unique for the Eon franchise in that every Bond film of the decade was directed by one director John Glen. The 1980s also saw the rare occurrence of a Bond film being released by a company other than Eon. 1983's Never Say Never Again saw Connery return to the role one final time.
Gary Connery is a British skydiver, BASE jumper, and professional stuntman. Connery has performed stunt-work in numerous films. He has also acted as the stunt-double for Gary Oldman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rowan Atkinson, and John Hurt. He is acknowledged as the first skydiver to land after a wingsuit jump without using a parachute. He made his first parachute jump at age 23, as part of his army training.
Doug "Danger" Senecal, born March 31, 1962, in Palmer, Massachusetts, is known as Doug Danger. He is an American motorcycle jumping world record holder and stunt performer and Stage 4 cancer survivor who lives in Oak Hill, Florida.
Ski-BASE jumping is the recreational sport of skiing at a high speed off of a cliff or mountain and free-falling through the air, using a parachute to descend to the ground, therefore combining the two sports of skiing and BASE jumping. Participants often perform tricks or manoeuvres during the freefall and remove their skis mid-air in order to safely deploy the parachute and land.