Catching up with… The Fanatics

The Fanatics are well named – they are young, athletic and devoted with tremendous talent, focus and dedication. James is 20 and Landon 16 and they have only been flying together for two years. Gold medalists at the 2024 Canadian Indoor nationals, The WindGames and The World Cup, it’s fair to say, they nailed it! We were happy they talked to us about how they skyrocketed to the very top…

Fanatics: Yes, that was the goal. We trained really hard leading up to worlds and to WindGames, a year ahead of the competitions, very consistently shooting for that goal to win everything.

Fanatics: We train at least every month, sometimes more, we’ll do many, many hours each time we’re together, in a camp format. 

Fanatics: Quite a long time. Once we get the rough foundation of the routine built, it takes many reps, just over and over again to really get everything in synch. We’ll go in and out of the tunnel and communicate about what each of us need to do to make this part more in synch, or to make that part look cooler.

Fanatics: We both have similar discipline, work ethic. We both have a strong desire to get better and to keep winning these competitions, so everything aligned to make a good team. 

Fanatics: It’s both of us just weighing in and giving input with different things, then working together and communicating on how we can do the hardest elements and really fly them together, and in synch. Flying in this way almost makes it to be a routine that is not something one of us could go in and fly on our own. It’s a 2-way routine, not just two people flying different patterns.   

Fanatics: There was some minor adjusting when we got to that tunnel, because of the size, but we planned it ahead for the free routine. We knew how tall the tunnel was as we were creating our free routine for worlds, so we took that into account. It was always the goal to use the whole tunnel, not just horizontally but using all the vertical space that we could. 

Fanatics: We are always referencing each other, because having each other as a reference is really what makes it a 2-way routine, rather than having two people on their own.

Landon: Just working hard. Focusing on the goal. I’m still in high school, so it’s hard to juggle all the work and flying too. Every day at Macau I was coming home to the hotel and  in the evenings I still had to do my homework.

James: It was pretty intense at the end. It came down to a tiebreaker.  We made a couple of mistakes in the final round, which led us to have to go to the tiebreaker. What gave us the opportunity to go to the tiebreaker was our free routine, which was strong. Our free routine scored the highest of everyone in the entire competition, so we had that confidence going into the last round. Knowing that our free round was stronger meant we knew we had a little bit of leeway. We could make a mistake in the speed round and still qualify for the tiebreaker.

James: At that point it is what it is. We were just trying to fly the best we can at that moment. Not thinking about what happened, just focusing on what’s next.

Landon: I try to focus, I don’t have so much competition history as most of the other athletes, in fact I probably have the least amount of competitions out of anyone there. I feel I could definitely have handled it better but we still managed to get it done. 

James: Right now, I am just focusing on competition. It’s not just the indoor stuff but I am also competing outdoor, skydiving, with XP Ascend. It’s a freefly team with the current world champions in freestyle. We’re doing a freefly team with the three of us. It’s a lot to manage so I am just focusing in on the competition stuff, and doing some coaching, both indoor and in the sky. We do tunnel camps and angle camps with Ascend. 

James, you entered four different events at The WindGames and two at The World Cup. Did you find it challenging doing so many events? 

James: It’s definitely a little difficult. It’s something that becomes easier the more competitions you do. It is very different just doing one event and having the rest of the time to relax, versus competing in the tunnel, getting out and your next event is happening right now so you need to get ready again. A lot of people describe the feeling just before flying a competition round as a high energy state, nervous, on edge but ready for anything. So doing multiple events is being in that hyper state all day. You’re a lot more tired at the end of the day than normally. It is something that if you’re going to do a lot of events, it just is the way it is. Even at worlds I was only doing two events –  2way and freestyle – it was still a lot.   At WindGames I was doing four so it was definitely something extra to deal with there. 

James: I’ve learned to handle it, It’s not too crazy any more. In the beginning it was definitely a lot and I had to figure out some things, like how to schedule it and getting everything planned out in advance. But as long as I know where I am going to be, it works out.

James: I am pretty split between the two; I really enjoy both types of flying, I don’t think I could give up either one. I love them both. While we were in Spain at Empuria for The  WindGames, Landon did a tandem in one of the breaks before the competition, and I went on the jump with him, so that was a cool thing to do while we were there. 

Landon: I’ve done a couple of tandems, I definitely might try it out. 

Fanatics: It was a super well run competition. It is always a world class event. For sure it is one of the best competitions out there. We were super happy they started doing it again, after the Covid break. 

Fanatics: Macau was super well organized as well. The equipment and tunnel set-up were very professional. They had a complete professional video system setup with cameras connected to monitors showing different angles so we didn’t have to video ourselves, we could just get out and watch the exact same views as were going to be used to judge in the actual competition. That was super cool as a help in preparation. The tunnel is probably one of the greatest tunnels in the world right now. It’s an Aerodium tunnel, it’s very tall so that’s super nice for that factor and it’s very smooth and among the fastest tunnels in the world. Everything about it is really well set up for competitions, so it made competing more enjoyable. 

Landon: You’ve got to put everything else to the side and focus on one thing. Whatever you want to do you’ve got to focus on that. You can’t try to juggle a lot of other things too, you’ve got to just keep your eyes on whatever prize you’re going for. 

Fanatics: Definitely we’d like to give a big thank you to TonFly, they have really supported us. They helped us out with suits and helmets and made sure to get us gear quickly when we needed it, so they have been very supportive along the way. And absolutely a big thanks to both our sets of parents for sure, they have been amazing. 

Fanatics [laughing]: It’s kind of our thing, the bright suits. There is really no other dynamic team that has exciting suits. This team has black suits, that team has white … so, we wanted to make things more interesting and fun because, well – why not?! So, at WindGames we wore pink, worlds was blue and who knows what color we’ll be next?!

Landon: We are definitely staying together with the 2-way Dynamic.  We might branch out into 4-way in the future… but I’ll leave the freestyle to James!

Fanatics: We’d like to give a big shoutout to Rafael Schwaiger, Martin Dedek, Filip Crnjakovic  and Josh Ruiz-Velasco. They have definitely been a big help in our very fast development. In just over a year, we were able to go from never competing together all the way to winning the worlds in China. Those guys fast-tracked our progression. They really helped put together our free routines. Asking for their opinions and getting advice for different sequences and tricks was a big benefit to us for sure. Thanks so much to these guys, and to everyone else who supported us along the way.