Australian BMX champ dies in celebration accident

A top Australian BMX rider has died from massive injuries he sustained while apparently trying to leap from a balcony into a swimming pool. Dane Searls, 23, had been fighting for his life since he fell from a first-floor balcony at a nightclub in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast on Sunday night. Reports said he had been attempting to dive into the pool but hit the concrete around the water instead. "The man... was taken to the intensive care unit of the Gold Coast Hospital after the incident, however he died this morning," Queensland police said in a statement, adding that a report would be forwarded to the coroner. Searls, famous for completing huge dirt jumps on his bike, was at the nightclub celebrating after pulling off one of the biggest leaps ever attempted. The extreme sportsman had achieved a series of BMX jumps across gaps of up to 18 metres (60 feet). "On the weekend he had been performing on 60-foot BMX jumps with backflips and other tricks and doing them comfortably," Paul Everest from Unit, one of Searls' main sponsors, told the Courier Mail newspaper.