Gary Connery

Gary Connery (born 18 June 1969) 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.

On 9 May 2003 Connery jumped off Nelson's Column at Trafalgar Square in Central London in what was described as a "death-defying protest stunt" which was organised by Act For Tibet, in support of the Dalai Lama.

He climbed the 170 ft monument without a safety harness and jumped from the top, landing using a parachute.

At the end of the jump he was arrested along with three other protesters.

Connery admitted that the jump was "frightening".

Connery was the first person to jump from Nelson's Column because up to that point the height of the monument was viewed as insufficient to allow for a successful jump.

Coming back from California (Perris Valley) in 2003, where he did his first wingsuit flight, he said: "that could be landed!"

and he went for a week to do wingsuit flight training at Empuriabrava on the coast of Spain, the largest dropzone in Europe.

Before the final attempt, he had made two test flights landing with a parachute.

He had also trained for weeks in Italy and Switzerland in preparation for the jump.

He had to obtain permission from the Civil Aviation Authority for the dive.

The flight was filmed by Mark Sutton.

Three seconds into his record-setting flight, his wingsuit inflated, its airflow dynamics enabled controlled gliding, and his speed reached about 80 mph. At approximately 200 ft over the landing strip, he changed the configuration of his wingsuit so as to decrease the gliding and vertical (falling) components of his velocity to 50 mph and 15 mph respectively.

Just before the final approach, Connery briefly appeared to lose control but quickly recovered.

For added safety during landing, Connery wore a neck brace.

Connery landed safely on a strip made of approximately 18,600 cardboard boxes.

The landing strip area was 350 ft long by 45 ft wide and its maximum height was 12 ft. The landing strip included separate layers each featuring cardboard boxes with varying dimensions.

It took Connery about thirty seconds to emerge from the cardboard boxes.

Connery mentioned that although on the way down he experienced turbulence, the landing was "soft and comfortable".

The landing was attended by about a hundred spectators.

The landing rig, also known as the box rig, was constructed on the outskirts of Henley on Thames.

Landing in a wingsuit without using a parachute had been one of Jeb Corliss's main objectives since 2010.

Corliss and other top-level wingsuit jumpers had tried for years to design wingsuits similar to the one which Connery helped design and subsequently used for his record-setting leap.

In the beginning, Corliss thought that Connery's stunt was an April Fool's joke and that the stunt Connery was attempting was impossible.

Corliss added that Connery's landing was "one of the most amazing things" he had seen in his life and called it the "greatest stunt ever performed".

He also added that "he bears no ill will toward the man who stole his dream" and that he goes by the Samurai code by giving respect to his opponent.

Corliss also expressed surprise that Connery chose to land head-first, risking a neck injury.

The New York Times has compared Connery's jump to a superhero's. Flying Magazine has called the jump a "history-making stunt" and mentioned that Connery had confidence he would succeed because of the "excellent control" he had over his suit.

The commentary also added that the risk factors should not be underestimated.

Connery's landing was studied as an extreme example of the effectiveness of shock absorbing material.

He was the stunt-double of the Queen during one of the parts of 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

He has performed 880 skydives and 450 BASE jumps.

He has jumped from locations such as the Eiffel Tower, Nelson's Column, the London Eye, London's Tower Bridge, and from inside the Millennium Dome.

He was jailed for 18 months in 2022 for causing grievous bodily harm to his girlfriend by pushing her down the stairs in their house.

Connery jumped through the centre of the Eiffel Tower on a rainy day with winds gusting at 25 mph (40 km/h).

On 23 May 2012 Connery made his wingsuit jump from a helicopter flying at a height of 2400 ft over Ridge Wood in Buckinghamshire near his hometown of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.