Most people when they turn 70 enjoy the quiet life – but not this gang of awesome Italian skydivers who keep busy breaking records…
Photo by Marco Rossi
To set a new world record with a team of only Italians could seem an impossible goal, but scrolling through the POPS organization’s pages (www.pops-usa.com) we discovered that one of the records in the JOS category (Jumpers Over Seventy) was 3 points in Formation Skydiving 9-Way.
We reckoned we could beat that…
Although the rules for the realization of these records allows partial separation of the formations, we decided to create a sequence of random formations with a total “break”. To be able to achieve a great performance, we thought of randoms that would allow a rapid succession of points and, possibly, be “brain lock free”. The result: a new random that we have called “MIRZAN CLUSTER” to honor a great Italian skydiver of the past, Roberto Mirzan, considered #1 for many of us.
Any place is beautiful seen from above”
Roberto Mirzan
The choice of the location of the attempt fell on the Sky Dream Center, the DZ of Cumiana (Turin), where we were able to appreciate the organization and hospitality. The airplane, a Pilatus PC6, in the hands of Roberto Lomonaco, was the perfect way to enhance the experience of Italian skydivers.
Photo by Marco Rossi
The event was attended by the “over seventy” members of the Ripcord Italy Team, joined in this event by some welcome “guests”, bearers of great experience and excellent quality. A not optimal start to the weekend in terms of weather forced us to reduce the planned attempts to six jumps in two days. It’s quite interesting for us to note that in five jumps we exceeded the previous record. Probably, due to a lack of confidence among the skydivers, some of whom had never jumped together before, we were unable to overcome the six-point threshold, certainly an achievable measure.
Anyway, the new world record, JOS FS 9-Way 6 points, was set by: Italo Brizzolesi, Nando Buoso, Roberto Carrani, Carlo De Martino, Stelio De Vitis, Eugenio Pizzitutti, Giancarlo Salvini, Giancarlo Sarti, Claudio Serafini.
By the way, Giancarlo Sarti participated in this project just after celebration of his 80th birthday: a record in the record. Congratulations JOES!
Video – JOS Sequential World Record
Many thanks to Emanuelle Bielli for his assistance in writing this article
- 70+ and Still ROCKIN’ IT! - 28th September 2020
- 70+ and Still ROCKIN’ IT! - 28th September 2020