Former coach of the XV of France, Marc Lièvremont came close to death after being the victim of a paragliding accident on Monday on Reunion Island.
His life was hanging by a thread. Or rather to a tree branch. On Monday, Marc Lièvremont was the victim of a paragliding accident in Reunion Island, close to death. After setting off for a flight in the Saint-Joseph valley, located in the south of the island, in the company of other paragliders, his sail got caught in a tree and he remained suspended in the air for almost three hours.
“I swung into a dizzying cliff but I stayed too close to the wall, too close to the vegetation. The sail got caught in a tree, tore and I found myself perched above the void, 500 m above the ground. I was hanging on a small branch at the top of a twenty meter high tree without being able to do anything,” the Canal+ consultant told Le Parisien.
“The branch could break at any moment”
After hours of anguish and worry, the former coach of the XV of France was finally saved by two gendarmes who came to his aid. “I was very scared. The branch could break at any time. I was stuck. (…) The emergency services were notified, the gendarmerie arrived by helicopter but I could not be airlifted because I was too close to the wall. Two gendarmes abseiled and we climbed back up,” added Marc Lièvremont, who miraculously escaped unscathed.
“It’s exceptional to be here, alive. I could have ripped myself open on the tree, rolled down the slope, crashed. I have practically nothing, only a few scratches,” he confided. And, aware of his luck, he might never go paragliding again. “I love it but now I tell myself that I was really lucky and that we shouldn’t play with that. I burned a joker and I might not get two. I’m doing very well,” he concluded.
Marc Lièvremont, who took advantage of the international break to go to Reunion, will now recover from his emotions before returning to France at the end of the week.
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