Daredevil athlete Andy Lewis, 39, was one of two people killed in a weekend BASE jumping accident in Utah, authorities said on Sunday.
The accident appeared to be related to a tandem BASE jumping maneuver in which two people jump from a cliff and deploy a parachute in mid-air. The name of the other man was not immediately available.
Lewis is a four-time world champion slackliner, winning the first world championship slackline event in 2008 in Scotland, along with the next three that followed.
After achieving his full potential in slacklining, he moved on to BASE jumping, starting a BASE jumping company in Moab.
John McEvoy, an Idaho-based BASE jumping instructor who has jumped with Lewis, said Lewis was widely admired in the BASE jumping community and had a reputation for taking risks that others would avoid, including jumping through tighter gaps and waiting longer than many experienced jumpers would before opening his parachute.
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“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy told the Associated Press. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
Andy Lewis, left, on the GoPro Mountain Games CoLab stage in 2024. Ryan Sederquist/Vail Daily
Lewis is best known for performing with Madonna during the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2012, when he debuted the mostly-unknown sport of slacklining to the world.
Lewis talked to the Vail Daily shortly after the performance in a preview of what was to come at that year’s Mountain Games.
“Over the past seven years I have devoted my life, body and mind to the sport,” said Lewis, then 25. “The chance to do the Super Bowl, for me, felt like a gift from the slackline gods thanking me for all my hard work.”
After the Super Bowl, “My career has been a rocket, launched into a state of hyperdrive,” he said. “I am just flying through the galaxy right now, and I have no idea where I should stop, or where I could go. I am getting offers from every part of the globe for every kind of slackline stunt you can imagine.”
Twelve years later, on the 2024 Mountain Games CoLab stage, Lewis reflected on that pivotal moment in his life. Madonna had offered him $350,000 to go on tour the following year, and he declined.
“Technically speaking, she said no to me,” he clarified on stage. “She wanted me to go and I asked for a million dollars. I was like, ‘I will go for a year, I’ll be my best self — million bucks.’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll do $350,000.’ And I was like ‘I’m walking.’”
Lewis said Madonna tried to temp him with offers of traveling the world, but he again declined.
Andy Lewis at the GoPro Mountain Games in 2024. Ryan Sederquist/Vail Daily
After the CoLab event, Vail Daily reporter Ryan Sederquist asked Lewis what kind of financial situation he was going back to when he turned down the $350,000 from Madonna.
“Lewis hinted it wasn’t much,” Sederquist wrote. “Basically nothing, in fact. But he had what he loved … and that’s what counted.”
“Money is the middleman to your dreams,” Lewis told Sederquist. “If you’re already doing what you love, then what’s money?”
—The Associated Press contributed to this report