Wind Games 2024

The excitement was palpable on arriving at Windoor, Empuriabrava, for the first Wind Games after a 4-year break. Staff, competitors and judges all love this competition, as it has a vibe like no other. The Games was held over 2 days, Friday 23 – Saturday 24 February, with teams training hard right until the last minute – 3 am on Friday morning! 

The meet organizers had a disaster on Thursday night, when the Dynamr judging system literally caught fire. Dynamr is used to judge three of the six events, so was essential. Windoor’s engineer Jordi rebuilt the system overnight and it worked flawlessly, chapeau!

Live stream

The event was broadcast live from start to finish, over 14-hour-days, run by the seemingly tireless Regan Tetlow and Rai Ahmed on commentary. Rai had her work cut out, explaining the rules of the events to the general public, as well as noting the action in the tunnel, and the ongoing scoreboards. Regan bound it together with his usual tremendous energy, enthusiasm and professionalism. Allegra Nasi interviewed various individuals and teams so we could follow the highs and lows of the scores and the flyers. Some 80 Windoor staff were involved to make the Games run smoothly. The organisation, dedication and efficiency of everyone was super-impressive; this was combined with smiling faces and good spirit. 

Clockwork

Nothing new was brought to the table this Wind Games but, after such a long break, and with many staff changes, the goal was to run a compressed event efficiently, providing a foundation for 2025. Of that, Windoor did an excellent job. The meet ran like clockwork and even finished 15 minutes early, almost unheard of! I heard nothing but good things about the Games from everyone there. 

4-way FS

France – Aethers

The standout team of the meet was the new French 4-way team, Aethers Medjay, who were simply phenomenal. They romped out of the starting gates winning the first round by 4 points and never looked back. Aethers took the gold medal 37 points clear of the silver, with an incredible average of 33.8. It was phenomenal flying, with zero wasted energy. They made the jumps look amazing – neat, precise, incredibly fast, and with a consistency of this exact flying style as well as performance over the entire competition. Aethers won 9 of the 10 rounds.

This team looks like the one to watch going forward. They are just so strong. This new line-up of French 4-way has youth on its side, with a 20- and 22-year old on the team, backed by the experience and knowledge of the veteran French coaches.

Unfortunately, the Wind Games clashed with the US Open Indoor Nationals, held at Paraclete XP on the same weekend, so world champions Airspeed could not attend the Wind Games. Hayabusa were also absent, running a skills weekend in New Zealand for their canopy sponsor, Gyro. 

Without a direct comparison at Wind Games, the question on everyone’s lips is, are Airspeed or Hayabusa going to be able to keep up with Aethers? We will soon find out at the forthcoming World Cup of Indoor Skydiving, 16-22 April 2024, at GoAirborne in Macau, China. Details here

Qatar – Tigers

Taking the silver medal with an impressive 30.1 average were Qatar Tigers, one of three Qatari teams competing. These teams have been run as a stable for more than a decade, with current coaches Andy Grauwels, who trains the Tigers, and Gary Smith and Luc Verstrepen, who train the backup teams of the Lions and the Cheetahs. The Tigers displayed great mental strength in this meet. When they had a glitch in the tunnel the team did a good job of re-setting and getting the dive back on track. Although clearly outclassed by the French, they outscored them on one round, for which they should be proud. They are beautiful flyers; neat, elegant and fast. Kudos to the whole Qatari stable and their coaches. All the flyers in the Lions and Cheetahs were at their first tunnel competition! Qatar Lions showed impressive form, finishing in fifth with a 27.2 average. Cheetahs were 14^th with a 23.3 average, they recently changed a team member, who subsequently returned in a different slot. 

UK – NFTO 

NFTO, current outdoor female world champions, and open UK national champions, came into the meet with tremendous confidence, which, ultimately secured their bronze medal. They had a few glitches on the first day but kept it together and always quickly re-set. They have been training with Julien Degen and integrating some new techniques into their flying. Libby Kennedy joined NFTO about a year ago. She was flying in two teams, also competing with FCUK Weembi, a player/coach team with Julien. She showed enormous composure despite having only a minute between her two competition rounds, and not always with the same engineering! We hope this team stays together. They have a high work ethic, amazing skills and the mental strength to fly their best. NFTO will always be winners; whatever goal they set themselves they will achieve it, as they have so much history of doing just that. They were worthy medallists – and how cool to see an all-female team on the open podium, especially with the high standard of teams at this event.

ISR Fireflash

In fourth place were the Belgian team ISR Fireflash, a long-standing team but not recently trained and flying with a new team member. Fireflash looked strong, and improved throughout the first day. This ended with an amazing round 6, one of the best of the meet, pushing them into third place, tying with NFTO at the end of the day. Perhaps Fireflash let this affect their nerves, as their first two flights on Saturday suffered some serious glitches. They regained their form in the last two rounds, but the damage was done so they finished just outside the medals. Fireflash should still be very proud of their performance, ending with a 27.7 average and never scoring below 20. They have an excellent skill set, good technique, and a great positive energy. 

Special mentions

The German team Airbus showed excellent block technique and neat flying. Tall people flying in a 14-foot diameter tunnel, they still managed to make their flights look good. Airbus have an excellent foundation for the future, having worked hard on doing it right they can now take the speed up a notch. 

The French ladies’ team Nephtys are a relatively new line-up with young talent joining veteran Pamela Lissajoux. They put in a strong, consistent performance to end in seventh with a 26.5 average. Fly X from Italy showed excellent skills, we hope this team stays together as for sure they are destined for greatness, with the form they displayed at this meet, equalling the French ladies. 

High standard 

Overall, the standard was very high. Yes, the draw had an almost-random dive, but it still wasn’t super-fast. Yet we had 20 teams with a 20-plus average (including four Spanish teams), and 12 teams with 25+. 

At the US Nationals running at the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, Arizona Airspeed won with a 31 average, and four teams scored over 25. To help balance out a different draw, a convention is to remove the highest and lowest scores and average the rest, to give a ‘trimmed mean’, for comparison purposes. This calculation puts Airspeed on 30.6 and the French Aethers on 32.5. Let’s see how they compare in Macau!

Full results

InTime scoring has the full results, including the draw, videos and busts here

US Indoor Nationals results, for comparison purposes

The US Indoor Nationals results here

Spanish 4-way FS Nationals

The Wind Games doubled as the Spanish Indoor Nationals, with all Spanish teams’ scores counting to decide the Spanish champions. It was a good turnout for the Spaniards, with 7 teams in the open 4-way FS and 3 teams in AA. 

Spanish AAA Nationals

Papea1 had a superb meet, winning the Spanish title with 266 points, 41 points ahead of nearest rivals, Windobono Alakran, who took the silver medal. Papea2 had a close battle with Windobona Angels, just clinching the bronze by 2 points. Papea1 were sixth overall in the Wind Games, showing how strong the standard of Spanish flying has become. 

Spanish AA Nationals

Top of the AA podium was another all-female team, Mamma Mai. All team members are mothers, they flew with quiet determination and focus to a 10.4 average, well done ladies! Aston Martin came second and Top Fun took the bronze and lived up to their name.

VFS

Windoor Barcelona – what a team! They were all amazing flyers, mostly Windoor instructors. WD Barcelona were amazing to watch, flying hard and robustly. They had a disastrous round 6 at the end of the first day, picking up 5 busts, pulling them closer to the other teams. But they managed to hold their nerve and fly consistently the next day to clinch the gold with 207 points, ahead of Vertical Storm on 202. The VFS draw was not fast so there wasn’t really much opportunity for a team to catch up. 

Vertical Storm, the silver medallists, are a long-running team but with one new team member who only started flying last summer. They are an Italian army team, hence the ‘Esercito’ jumpsuits (this means ‘army’ in Italian). They had a poor first few rounds, in fact not a great first day. It took them a while to find their rhythm and their competition mindset, with a new flyer at his first tunnel competition. But, hats off to Vertical Storm! The team grew in confidence and showed what they were capable of on the second day, outscoring the winners on two rounds. A good job getting back on track, well done guys. Hopefully this competition experience will stand them in good stead for the forthcoming World Cup in Macau, which they are entering. It’s rumoured that USA’s team SDC Core, long time World Champions, will not be competing due to team member changes, so the field looks wide open for a new country to champion in VFS.

Bronze medallists Top Top Quality improved as the meet went on, their confidence grew and they put in some excellent rounds on the second day. They were happy with their performance. 

Remote judging

The VFS and FS 4-way were judged remotely using the InTime scoring system. Only the head judge Thierry Courtin was physically present in Empuria; he was coordinating judges in Austria, Belgium, France, Finland, Poland, Spain and Germany! The judging team did a good job getting scores out quickly, and the live scoring was displayed in the bar area at Windoor, adding to the excitement.

Junior freestyle

This was a very tight competition. Fuyuki Kono and Sofiya Korkhina were closely matched all the way and went into the last round with just 0.1 separating them. Fuyuki has a very gymnastic routine, starting with a walkover into the tunnel and using her incredible flexibility with a lot of full splits in almost every orientation. Fukiya gave it away in the last round, a free round to music. Although her technical score was higher than Sofiya’s she did not fly as cleanly or present the routine as well as she is capable of. Sofiya really put her all into flying her absolute best, and took the gold by a tiny margin of 0.3. Her final routine was amazing. Sofiya is very dedicated to her flying. Her compulsory rounds were the strongest in the competition and she had a very high level of dedication to her free routine.

Taciana Giacometti went into the final round neck and neck with Asya Korkhina (Sofiya’s sister) and Maya Goldwasser, just 0.3 between these flyers. Taci kept her nerve with a beautifully executed routine, outscoring her rivals to take the bronze medal by 0.8. 

The pressure of competing at a world level event can easily affect every flyer’s nerves; often this is more pronounced in the juniors. This is why it’s brilliant for our sport to have junior competitions, to let these talented young flyers experience real competition nerves and learn how to channel them. 

There were no real surprises with the freestyle, nothing new in terms of tricks came to the table. But it was excellent to see a whole raft of new flyers in this category, I am sure we will see most of them in years to come, bringing something new to the sport. The Junior Freestyle and Freestyle were the most popular with the crowd and the live stream audience, being beautiful and entertaining to watch.

Freestyle

The importance of the compulsory rounds showed, with the medallists all putting up strong scores. Some new compulsory moves were introduced two years ago, and it has taken time for competitors to understand exactly what the judges want to see. Now they can nail the moves because they know what they need to show, they have had the time to strengthen the areas they needed to. This was reflected in the high marks for these rounds. The flyers joined the three compulsory moves together with other moves, giving them the chance to show strong flying skills and presentation. A lot of the freestylists are also dynamic flyers so they add a lot of flow and movement to the freestyle routines. It’s not just ‘pure’ freestyle any more. 

James Rogers was a worthy winner, demonstrating strong athletic flying, great technical skill and flashy moves – a real crowd-pleaser! James surely qualified for ‘Man of the Match’, competing in the most disciplines and winning almost all of them. 

Silver medallist Evelina Kalugina was a very strong and graceful flyer, flying with passion and emotion. She competed in 4way dynamic as well, stayed smiling throughout the competition and managed to pull off a great routine at the end of two days of full-on flying.

Daphny Morali is more of a traditional freestylist, with impressive spins and twists in place, like an ice skater. She always creates an interesting routine to music, with a creative start, her moves are in time and in tune. Daphny has excellent artistic interpretation and it’s always a pleasurable overall experience to watch her free rounds. 

Henrique Guindalini and Johannes Heptner were very elegant, graceful flyers, we are really looking forward to seeing these competitors in future events. Eight competitors entered this event, from seven different countries, thanks to all for making the trip.

Solo speed

The rules of solo speed are simple; flyers do one circuit of the tunnel flying three pre-determined moves, the fastest flyer over the eight rounds is awarded the title. A bust for infringing the ring, centre line or side line adds 3 seconds to the flyers’ score. Busts are shown instantly, with a red flashing light and ‘uh-oh’ buzzer, to the groans of the crowd. This event was intense to watch, seeing the expressions and body positions of the flyers trying to extract every tiny morsel of speed possible. 

Hard core athlete James Rogers was a worthy winner, he flew every round cleanly, with full-on flying at high speed. From the start you could tell he meant business, he was going for gold with a clear determination and fire in his eyes, especially visible when he was ready to enter the tunnel for his round… and when waiting impatiently, hands on hips, for the result. James will undoubtedly go far, with this amount of determination, dedication to training and talent, there is no limit, he has all the elements of a champion. 

In silver was Adrien Gallot, who would have given James a run for his money except in round 2 he picked up three busts, adding a 15-second penalty. Adrien was faster than James on 5 of the 8 rounds but because James didn’t bust, he came out on top. Third was Windoor instructor Lewis Hard, just ahead of Sofiya Pauzin.

It’s so important to fly cleanly in Solo Speed. A 3-second penalty is a harsh addition when there is only one page involved. The times are a lot shorter than three pages of 2-way or 4-way Dynamic, which has a 5-second bust, proportionately lower. That said, it’s a lot easier to fly cleanly with only one person in the tunnel. Special mention for Jo In Su, who was the only other flyer to not bust, giving an excellent foundation for future competitions. It’s easier to add speed to precision than the other way round. 

2way Dynamic

13 teams entered the 2-way dynamic, flying on the Friday to seed the flyers for the tournament the next day to decide the medals. The US team Fanatics (James Rogers and Landon Karaberis) looked like the strongest flyers from the start, proving the fastest and second fastest in the two speed rounds, and scoring the highest on their free round. This form continued into Saturday, when the two American flyers flew clean, rapid speed rounds, and a great fantastic round to take them into the final against local team Dodos. 

The final consisted of a free round and a speed round. Fanatics won the free round with a technically difficult, beautifully executed routine. These flyers are astonishingly synchronous with their spins, twists and tricks, drawing lots of oohs and aahs from the crowd. In the final speed round Fanatics were clean, Dodos were quicker but picked up a 5-second penalty for a bust, giving the gold to Fanatics and leaving Dodos with the silver. 

Battling for the bronze were the young team Eaglets, who flew quickly and accurately. They were competing head-to-head with Fly Helsinki, who were among the slower flyers but had a very strong free routine they had worked hard on. However, it wasn’t good enough to beat the Eaglets’ final free round. In the last round of the meet, a speed round, Eaglets trounced Helsinki, scoring 54.3 seconds with a clean round to Helsinki’s raw score of 61.1 seconds, which increased to 71.1 after two busts. 

It would have been good to see Fanatics fly against Eaglets in the final, since these were the two fastest teams, but this shows the importance of the free rounds to the medals. It takes a lot of time to create a routine, so teams that invest heavily reap the rewards at the competition. The free rounds also add a beautiful element to watch, set to music, showcasing flying skills, creativity and imagination.

The Eaglets (Adrien Gallot and Sofya Pauzin) had a charming free round, which they seemed to fly better every time. Windoor team The Dodos had great proximity and exceptional flyers by Dani Gallego and Lewis Hard but perhaps a lack of tricks. The Fanatics’ routine had everything; tricks, proximity, synchronicity, and an imaginative routine with the ‘wow’ factor. 

4way Dynamic

The 4-way Dynamic event only included speed rounds, there was no free round this time. Although it’s always terrific to watch 4-way free routines, it takes a LOT of time and training to put one together. So, having the meet purely judged on speed allowed more people to compete, throwing together some scratch teams. 

4way dynamic remains a very exciting event to watch – four flyers flying patterns at full speed, making sure not to overtake or run into each other. The speed-rounds-only format means the scores come out quickly, since it’s an absolute score, not subjective. This keeps the competition exciting, as does the head-to-head format, where teams fly against each other and the fastest goes forward. 

On Friday, the first day teams flew rounds to determine who battled against who in the tournament. WD Barcelona flew a faster round than Kings but picked up 3 busts, to lose that round. Windwerk and Eaglets Fanatics Arena had an incredibly close heat; Eaglets were faster but picked up three busts, putting them just five hundredths of a second behind Windwerk, who had two busts. 

This meant Windoor BCN flew head-to-head in two rounds against Eaglets Fanatics Arena for the bronze medal. Eaglets had faster raw times than WD, who picked up nine busts across the two rounds, so Eaglets took a well-deserved bronze medal. This team was put together at the last minute, with amazing flyers, including the gold and silver medallists in solo speed. Eaglets Fanatics Arena was clearly a team that could fly fast but was always going to have a ‘high propensity for bustability’, to coin Rai’s phrase of the meet. Windoor Barcelona were a scratch team with four amazing flyers but not much training time. Three Windoor instructors, Dani, Toni and Tiago were ably led around the tunnel by Leo Blanchon.

The final saw impressive flying by the aptly named Kings of the Sky, with a fast, clean first round that swept them to victory, despite losing the second round to Windwerk. Kings of the Sky looked very strong from the beginning, there was never much doubt that they would triumph. Silver medallists Windwerk were probably the most trained team at the meet, and had support in the crowd, with cow bells jingled and the Swiss flag waved when they were about to fly. 

Ultimately the teams who bust the least came out on top. That said, gold medallists Kings of the Sky were not only cleaner, they had the fastest raw score on many of the rounds. 

Challenges

The solo speed, D2W and D4W events featured several ‘Challenges’, where a team can ask the judges to re-judge the flight, hoping for the removal of a bust or busts. If the original score is upheld the team cannot challenge again. If the scores are adjusted the team retains their challenge as well as the lost points. Because the routines are scored live there is always a possibility for judging error. However, the majority of challenges were not successful in altering the scores, showing the judges were doing a good job. 

The Dynamic events were created for indoor skydiving competitions, and one of the goals was to get the scores out instantly, to keep the crowd on the edge of their seats. Unfortunately, the many challenges slowed down the event and killed the atmosphere on the live stream, there is only so much ‘filling in time’ even the most expert commentators can do. I hope this time delay can be solved in future Wind Games, while still giving the correct result. 

Multiple events

It was brilliant to see so many dynamic flyers entering multiple events, there was lots of overlap between solo speed, D2W, D4W and freestyle. Congratulations to all competitors, and most especially those who strutted their stuff across different disciplines.

And finally

A lively prizegiving with local dignitaries and Windoor directors honoured the athletes who had given their all to the Games. Pica-pica, a kicking DJ, and buoyant company kept the party rocking as athletes celebrated the Return of the wind Games. The Future is Back!

The dates for the next Wind Games are set, this time will be a larger production, over three days, from 30 January to 2 February, 2025. We can’t wait!

Meanwhile, you might like to see how these talented tunnel athletes get on at the World Cup in Macau, April, there will be a live stream to follow the action. More details to be announced, for now information is here.

More Info

Scoreboards

Full scores of all events are at these links

• All Scores
• FS, VFS Scores, Draw and Videos
• Wind Games website

Live Action

• Watch the events in sections of the Live Stream on the Windoor YouTube channel

Wind Games 2024 Highlights Video