Le pro rider Damien Leroy s'est crashé en paramoteur hier, un accident rare qui l'aurait obligé à sauter (?!) de 50m de haut... il aurait le fémur cassé, ainsi que le coccyx et des parties de la colonne fracturée, et le poumon perforé...
Triste nouvelle... On lui souhaite un rétablissement complet.
JUPITER — Think about standing on top of a 15-story building. Would you jump? When the steering equipment on Damien LeRoy’s motorized paraglider went out Monday night, he didn’t have a choice.
The professional kitesurfer leaped into the mangrove thicket about 150 feet below between State Road A1A and the beach near Ocean Bluffs Boulevard, town police said. He broke a thighbone, fractured his tailbone and parts of his spine and punctured a lung, his close friend Jon Modica said.
“He’s very lucky, considering. It was a freak accident in a lot of ways,” Modica said Tuesday afternoon, adding that LeRoy is expected to make a full recovery. “He’s cracking jokes and in very high spirits.”
LeRoy was flying over the sand near the Juno Beach Pier in his powered paraglider, which is a kite attached to a propeller engine strapped to the pilot’s back. Pilots of the ultralight craft take off from the beach using a running start, which inflates the kite above them. They rely on their engine, kite and handles with a throttle and brakes for control.
“He was over the water going in some type of circles and then headed west toward the road,” said Camila Nylen, a friend of LeRoy, whose sister and mother witnessed the crash. “He got me into the sport of kiting.”
LeRoy is no stranger to extreme sports and high-flying recreations. He won the 2011 Kite Slalom World Champion in Mucia, Spain, the same year he was named Kitesurfing Athlete of the Year by his peers in the sport. Most recently, he placed second in the Miami Kite Masters Racing competition.
Through being a professional athlete, LeRoy works with organizations such as Kiting for Kids, an organization that raises money and gathers toy donations for kids fighting life-threatening illnesses in local hospitals. He also mentors local teen kitesurfers.
People power-paragliding over the beach is common, but a crash like this one is rare, said a lifeguard that mans the beach close to where LeRoy crashed.
“I see those guys flying over me all the time,” said Len Rodriguez, a Palm Beach County Ocean Rescue life guard. “They wait for the wind to kick up. … That kind of helps them stay up there.”
LeRoy’s crash was the third one a Palm Beach County Ocean Rescue official could recall in the past 20 years.
Since starting in 1996, the sport has remained rather unregulated, according to the US Power Paragliding Association. A local powered paragliding instructor agrees.
“You don’t need a license,” said Higinio Morinigo-Gill, an instructor with Miami-based Florida Powered Paragliding. “You can fly almost anywhere, sunrise to sunset, (but) no flying over people. … You can’t fly over aerospace.”
Morinigo-Gill, who’s been power paragliding since 1998, said he has never had a serious crash like LeRoy, who’s been power-paragliding for roughly a year. Morinigo-Gill has only had a handful of emergency landings.
“That’s my own fault. I wasn’t watching the gas,” he said. He added that water can be dangerous, as the heavy equipment and lines can trap the pilot and drown.
Weather can also make for dangerous conditions, Morinigo-Gill said, noting that the most ideal wind speeds for power paragliders are zero to 10 mph. At the time of LeRoy’s crash last night, wind speeds in northern Palm Beach County were recorded at roughly 15 mph, according the the National Weather Service in Miami.
Wind speeds of “15 mph means 20 to 25 in the air, which is too much,” Morinigo-Gill said.
This lack of regulations gives the lifeguard Rodriguez some concern, thinking that LeRoy was lucky.
“The only regulations that I know of is they need to [take off and land] outside of the park swimming and guarded areas,” Rodriguez said. “We were off duty, what happens if he crashes offshore?