The man who died performing an aerial stunt for a movie shoot near Theewaterskloof Dam could have been a bird in a previous life, such was his extraordinary love and talent for flight.
South Africa's top skydivers are reeling from the death on Wednesday of one of the best among them, Graham Hoal, 49, who died on Wednesday while filming of a television ad for Amstel Lager.
He was being filmed as part of a sequence of stunts which, once edited, would have looked like something out of a James Bond movie.
The cameras were rolling when the stunt went horribly wrong, and the film crew are in shock.
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Hoal jointly held the record for the most number of jumps in a day According to the script, a parasailor is being towed behind a speedboat, when the lines snap and get caught on a moving truck passing over a bridge above. The parasailor is towed behind the truck all the way to a truck stop, where parasailor and driver share a beer.
The last shot needed by the moviemakers from Velocity Films should have been a simple one.
It was to be filmed from the roof of the moving truck and feature Hoal on a parachute approaching the truck at right angles. Hoal was meant to swerve away towards the back of the truck and land on the road. Instead, inexplicably, he swung hard right and slammed into the front of the truck.
Critically injured, Hoal was airlifted to the Vergelegen Medi-Clinic in Somerset West, where he died.
The national safety and training officer for the Parachute Association of South Africa, Mark Bellingan, is to file a full report for the Civil Aviation Authority.
Until recently, Hoal jointly held the South African record for the most number of jumps in a day - 40 - on his 40th birthday.
He also pioneered in South Africa what is perhaps closest to human flight, wing suit flying. Wearing a special webbed suit, skydivers are able to fly through the air at previously impossible lateral trajectories - in other words fly almost horizontally as they fall from the sky.
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