Slovak Record 

Oksana Golubtsova recounts the emotional story behind this success…

When Jozef Just mentioned to me the Slovak Bigway Record attempt during one of the Hohenems Challenge socials earlier in June this year, I would have never imagined that a month and a half later I’ll be a Slovak Record holder!

It was such a moving story. But, first things first, how it all started…

The previous Slovak Bigway Record (30-way) stood for more than 11 years. There was an attempt to break the record back in 2015, that ended in tragedy. On a practice jump on the 20^th of August, a mid-air collision happened between the two planes, which were carrying 38 skydivers in total. Seven people lost their lives; the pilot and co-pilot of each plane as well as three experienced skydivers.

That bought to a halt any record-breaking aspirations for eight long years, until in September 2023 Ján Oravec took the lead together with the President of the Slovak National Aero Club Miroslav Gábor and reinstated those dreams. Jozef Just, rightfully named “the brain and soul of the record”, assumed the role of Load Organiser, backed by Patrick Minár as Plane Captain. Rob Kendall wholeheartedly accepted to take care of the farm group – which ended up fully joining the record!

Jozef is well-known as an avid adept of canopy piloting education, after having attended several Flight-1 courses back in time and adhered to raising the safety standards in the industry with all his heart. So, he reached out to Flight-1, asking whether we would be interested in supporting the Slovak Bigway Record attempt. I was deeply impressed by the delivered pitch and by the professionalism in preparation for the forthcoming event. Without any hesitation the Sport Department Team was happy to support the event. 

As one of my beloved FS coaches, Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld puts it, “Skydiving is not a safe sport. It is a risky sport, which can be done safely”. Canopy piloting education in general is instilling safety under canopy and, particularly in the bigway environment, it translates into vital survival skills, for yourself and your teammates. It’s never too late to form a habit of attending a canopy course at least once a year, to keep on working on those essential piloting skills. Like this you’ll be ready for whatever situation life could throw at you (canopy collision avoidance, low turn recovery, coming back from a long spot, flight planning, etc). 

As of October 2023, the highly experienced organising team started getting ready for the Record for real. The word about Slovaks who would be attempting to break their national record spread quickly and multiple endorsements were received from various legends of our sport. The dedicated website was created (both, in English and Slovak languages): https://en.bigway2024.sk/ The committee was meeting each week to run countless tasks in order to lay the success foundations, such as validating the applications and making selections, deciding on the formations, filling up farming group, scheduling up training camps, both indoors and outdoors, hosting seminars throughout the winter, etc. 

A team of 48 skydivers was ultimately selected (42 men and 6 women), which was tasked with breaking the record – in gradually increasing numbers and via different formations. The spread of the experience level within the team was vast, ranging from 200 jumps to 9,000+ jumps. For a few people their largest formation prior to the record attempt was a 9-way and for nearly half of the attendants it was their first multi-plane. Nonetheless, the team was ready for the challenge ahead and the motivation in the air was palpable!

The 4^th of August, Sunday, was the first day when everybody got together. We started jumping in 4 smaller groups (11 to 15 ways). The weather wasn’t particularly playing the ball and after three jumps, the day was called. The next day, 5^th of August, saw the single plane loads of up to 23-way, to train longer approaches for everybody, floaters and divers. For the next two jumps the record (35-way) was attempted by the main team. It was very close each time, and looked really promising. 

The perseverance, focus and motivation paid back on the first jump the very next day, where the 35-way Record was officially set!

During those Monday attempts, the farm team was on the same load and same pass, supporting the record attempts participants from within the aircraft. Inspired by positive coaching from Rob and his direct calls “to enjoy the moment, let go of any stress and just have fun”, the farm team was very happy to oblige! Have you ever done a 9-way speed-star out of two Skyvans?!! 

Fast forward to the next day, the “have fun and no blame” ambiance created by Rob since the beginning had produced such an amazingly steep learning curve that everybody from the farm group was ultimately invited to join the main group!

Here we go, Tuesday, the 6^th of August. The first Record, 35-way, was already in the pocket from the first morning jump of all-Slovak nationals. Time to go bigger! The next attempt was set at 41-way, where the farm group was more than halved, to release its members for the largest group (and a foreigner admitted – myself). Only one person was missing on that record attempt, while the farm group managed to harvest 15 points on a 4-way during the same jump. The decision was made – everybody would be merged in the same team, attempting to set the 45-way record. We’ve been never so close (just one grip was missing during that attempt)! 

Still there was one more day of jumping left, the 7^th of August, Wednesday, and we now had a group of 46 jumpers. Oxygen wasn’t used at all during those attempts, since the exit altitude was around 4,200 meters (13,800 feet) AGL. The first wave break-off was maintained at 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) through all the previous attempts, allowing a massive safety buffer. Seeing the great discipline on the break-off and solid tracking skills demonstrated on all the previous jumps, the captains made a call to lower the break-off altitude [the “hard deck”] to 1,800 meters (6,000 feet). Meaning that the jumpers could leave either on LO’s kicks or per their audible, whichever came first. Actually, those extra four seconds added to the working time proved sufficient to snap the 46-way record on the very first attempt!

The cheering was heard from every corner of the landing area, while the judges got busy with validating this record attempt, performed by 46 skydivers. All jumps were filmed by 2 highly experienced and gifted videomen, who shared over 32,000 jumps between them! The moment came – all the participants were called for the official announcement outside…

We made it!!! We held the formation by just 3 frames, but it was enough to set the new record! (We’ve all heard of records held by a lesser amount of time!) The joy and sense of achievement went to the sky at that moment! 

At the same time, we could sense another subtle emotion, which became more and more evident. It appeared that we had 12 skydivers jumping with us on this record who survived the previous record attempt, nine years ago, and those sad memories took over. Everybody’s eyes were filling with tears as those 12 formed a tight circle inside the formation, putting arms on the shoulders of each other and bowing their heads, to commemorate those who didn’t make it that day… An outer circle formed spontaneously in the same manner, and we stood there for a while, united and overwhelmed by this feeling of irrevocable loss and tragedy, experienced first-hand by our teammates. It was decided unanimously to dedicate this record to those friends who were not lucky enough to make it in August 2015 and are no longer with us.

I’m deeply grateful to my Slovak friends for including me into their so moving success story. To celebrate the record, several enthusiasts suggested to launch Jozef in the swimming pool. When I saw Jozef hurriedly emptying his pockets of all the valuables, it occurred to me that it might not be a joke! Indeed, several moments later Jozef was already airborne, and, after a giant splash, he found himself in the middle of the pool. The same moment, he was joined by several more jumpers, and before I had any chance to escape (my official excuse was I didn’t have any bathing suit), it was made clear that everybody was invited for the post-record “water dive”! The ground support immortalized those fun moments with this fab photo:

I would like to round off this narrative with the words of Rob Kendall, from his closing speech: “It was clear from the warm up days that it would not be a question of ‘could they do it’ but ‘on which jump they would do it’. What’s next now? 3-plane formation? TBS Record? Everything is possible with this talented team, each and every one of you is already capable of achieving it!”

As Ferrari once said, “If you can dream it, you can do it”, so let’s dream big, shall we? 😉

46-way Record Jump Video

PS. Rumors are, there might be a combined Czech and Slovak record attempt next year, stay tuned!