Rick Sylvester

Rick Sylvester ( born April 3, 1942) is an American mountaineer, Kunstskispringer and stuntman. Sylvester was mainly used for a stunt scene in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 famous, in which he jumps as stunt double of lead actor Roger Moore on skis from a mountain cliff in the depth to free fall a to open in the colors of the Union Jack held parachute.

Life and work

Sylvester, who has lived since the 1960s in the village of Olympic Valley, where he temporarily the Ski Patrol, a kind volunteer (?) Mountain Rescue belonged with skis, already began to draw attention to himself in his early years as a skier and mountaineer. In particular, in the latter discipline in which he trained, among others, in Switzerland, he brought it to great artistry. So include, among others Mount Kenya, the second highest peak in Africa to own him as a climber climbed mountains.

Public sensation was caused by Sylvester, when he in 1971 with the help of skis called a BASE- jump, that is, a parachute jump, which has a fixed object such as a skyscraper or a mountain as a launching point from which located in California in Yosemite National Park monoliths El Capitan completed. He initially took a prepared with great ski run from the edge of around 1000 meters high rock to open a parachute in free fall and safely glide to the ground. The jump from El Capitan that Sylvester had prepared by a supplemental Skydiving training and he should be repeated two times, Sylvester gave the attention of an advertising agency that hired him to stage a similar stunt for a commercial for the product Canadina Club Whisky.

This promotional film in which Sylvester parachute imitating the name and color of the product, made the producers of at this time in his pre- located ligand film The Spy Who Loved Me - a part of the famous movie series about the British secret agent James Bond - on New Year's Eve attention.

These hired Sylvester on to perform a very similar stunt for her film: In one added on Mount Asgard on Baffin Island in Canada setting that was later than the beginning of scene used by The Spy Who Loved Me, Sylvester jumps than double of the Bond actor Roger Moore after a fast-paced chase on skis at full speed with his skis on a mountain cliff into a gaping chasm to open in freefall his parachute, which is held in the colors of the Union Jack.

The scene was recorded with four cameras, including a helicopter camera and today is considered one of the most spectacular stunts in the series, cost the production company Metro -Goldwyn-Mayer, according to Sylvester in an interview U.S. $ 500,000 and was thus " the most expensive stunt in movie history " was; of which $ 30,000 were directly as Gage on New Years Eve. At the same time Sylvester presented with his jump from a height of 3300 feet, almost 1100 meters, a new world record for base jumping on.

In the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only 1981 Sylvester Moore doubled for again, this time in a mountaineering scene.