One of the world’s best skysurfers has died after landing heavily during a freefall competition in Australia, the family of Queenslander Pauline Richards said on Friday.
Richards (44) fell to her death on Friday near the New South Wales town of Albury. She had made almost 4 000 jumps and was Australia’s top female skysurfer.
Police said her equipment appeared to have functioned properly.
”The parachute itself was fully operational, it was inflated and it looks like it was just a very heavy landing,” a police spokesperson told Australia’s AAP news agency. Police have a video of Richards’s final jump.
Richards was tipped to win gold at this year’s world skysurfing titles.
Richards, who moved from Hong Kong to Australia in 1989, had won medals in skydiving events around the world. In South Africa in the 1980s she set a record for the highest skydiving descent from a hot-air balloon. — Sapa-DPA