Extreme athlete Andy Lewis, who performed with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, dies in Utah base jump accident

The accident in Mineral Bottom

Andy Lewis died Sunday morning in a remote desert canyon near the Utah-Colorado border. He was attempting a tandem base jump with a 68-year-old client when the parachute failed to deploy fully, according to his ex-partner Hayley Ashburn. The pair jumped from roughly 85 metres. Rescue teams took about 45 minutes to reach the site due to the lack of mobile reception.

“The parachute did not open completely.”

Grand County sheriff's office confirmed Lewis's identity and identified the second victim as Danny Joe Kregle, a businessman and family man.

A life spent pushing limits

Lewis, a Moab native, dominated the niche sport of slacklining for years. He won four consecutive world championships between 2008 and 2011. In 2011 he set a Guinness World Record for side surfs (143 back-and-forth swings in one minute) above the Diaoshuilou waterfall in China. Three years later he walked a slackline stretched between two hot air balloons at 1,200 metres over the Nevada desert.

Super Bowl breakthrough

Lewis was largely unknown until he appeared with Madonna during the halftime show of Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. Wearing a Roman toga, he bounced and flipped on a narrow webbing strap while the pop star performed behind him. The exposure turned him into an overnight celebrity.

“My phone basically killed itself ringing for three days straight.”

Calculated danger

Lewis co-owned Aerial Arts Moab, an acrobatics company, and ran BASE Jump Moab, which offered tandem jumps to inexperienced clients. Fellow jumpers and instructors describe an athlete with extraordinary skill who deliberately sought out tighter landing zones and opened his chute later than most.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill built over years of practice. But he also took enormous risks.”

Base jumping carries a far higher risk of severe injury or death than skydiving; one 2007 study estimated it to be five to eight times more dangerous. According to the website BASEaddict, 540 people have died in the sport since 1981, including 30 in 2025.

“It's strange to think about how many people have died, because it's become almost normal.”