Ueli Gegenschatz
Ueli "The Sputnik" Gegenschatz was a Swiss BASE jumper, paraglider and skydiver who made over 1,500 jumps in his career. Ueli Gegenschatz was known for his expert paragliding, skydiving and BASE jumping and Wingsuit flying, and was considered an idol of the Swiss BASE jumping scene.
Biography
Ueli Gegenschatz was born in the Swiss canton of Appenzell. He completed his first parachute jump in the military preliminary course for long-distance scouts in 1989. Although Gegenschatz did not become a scout, he remained true to jumping: in 1990 he flew with a paraglider for the first time and from then on, as an amateur, he was part of the extended world elite. He would go on to make 1,500 jumps.In 1997, he made his first object jump from a 1000-metre high rock face in Norway. A member of the Swiss national paragliding team for four years, Gegenschatz co-founded the Red Bull acro team in 1995.
Among his BASE jumping achievements were jumps off Eiffel Tower, Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers as well as jumps off of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks all in one day. In 2000, he and Felix Baumgartner completed a successful BASE jump from the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland, UK. The pair escaped in a dinghy to avoid the authorities as BASE jumping is not legal in the UK.
In 2000, he and Hannes Arch were the first BASE jumpers to jump from the north face of the Eiger, and in 2005, he was the first to jump from the Matterhorn. In 2008, he reached a velocity of 250 km per hour on a wingsuit jump in County Galway, Ireland. The stunt, covering 17km claimed to be faster than an airplane taking the same distance.
While a world-class extreme athlete, Gegenschatz estimated he spent 60 percent of his time working as an insurance agent, working nights and weekends to be able to spend the rest of his time pursuing his career in extreme sports. In February 2009, Gegenschatz spoke about overcoming fears and extreme wingsuit flying at the TED 2009 event in Long Beach, California.