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70+ and Still ROCKIN’ IT!

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Most people when they turn 70 enjoy the quiet life – but not this gang of awesome Italian skydivers who keep busy breaking records…

9 Italian skydivers over 70 write history over Turin
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.

The awesome team involved in the project
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

Video by Marco Rossi (Catfish)

Many thanks to Emanuelle Bielli for his assistance in writing this article

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Meet: Carlo De Martino

Carlo De Martino is an Italian skydiver in his 70s. who did his first jump in 1977. He has more than 2400 jumps and 9 world record holder for POPS, SOS and JOS. He is also an Italian record holder for the biggest belly formation - a 53-way. Carlo is Team Leader of the “Team Ripcord Italy”.
His other hobbies are scuba diving (he'a an instructor), sking and paraglading.

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