Sport

The Sport of Skydiving

Skydiving is a highly competitive sport with a wide range of disciplines that you can specialise in one you have qualified.

Formation Skydiving (FS)

The most well known of the disciplines is formation skydiving. It consists of performing several figures, called formations, in a group of people.

Formation Skydiving can be practiced in groups of 4, 8 or 16, accompanied by a videoman who films the jump. It's a matter of performing a series of 5 to 7 formations drawn from a predefined program. Once all the figures have been performed the team restarts at the beginning of the cycle.

Each figure that is performed correctly is worth a point. The jump is judged on 35 seconds for 4-way teams and 50 seconds for 8-way and 16-way teams. The only thing that counts is the technical performance. The artistic performance has no value : one has to fly as fast as possible.

Formation Skydiving is also being practiced in big formations, not to try and perform the most figures but to make the largest one. The World Record is a 300-way.

Freeflying (FF)

Officially there are no rules for Freefly, it can be practiced alone or in a group in whatever position and for whatever purpose. This new discipline is very popular and is being practiced more and more every day.

Actually, even though Freefly doesn't have rules like the other disciplines, there are still some known rules to play this game. Freeflyers move about head down (sometimes in sitting position or in standfall position) and try to fly close to or play with others turning around each other. The head down position provides a high level of speed which improves the effect of three dimensional movements. Freeflyers don't always plan their jump (or part of it) and follow their imagination ... depending on their technical capacities.

Accuracy

One of the oldest skydiving disciplines consists of trying to land as close as possible to a 3 cm target.

The accuracy jumpers leave the plane at 1 000 meters and work on their approach so that in the final phase of landing they are facing the wind, slightly above the target, restraining the canopy in order to control it's every movement very precisely. The target is an electronic device measuring up to 16 cm from its center.

Accuracy is practiced individually as well as in teams of four. The score of the team is the total distance of each individual jump.

Canopy Relative Work (CReW)

Canopy Relative Work involves producing formations whilst under canopy. Canopies attempt to link up to produce stacks or planes.