A couple of weeks before the World Championships started, swoopers from all over the world gathered together around the great Z-Hills swoop pond. Like standard Accuracy, another discipline where you need your parachute instead of the freefall to compete, all competitors try to practice as much and as intensely as possible at the venue where the games will be held.
Over 100 jumpers registered by the start of the meet, 4 November, representing around 25 nations. The last World Championships, Dubai 2012, was bigger, though 100+ jumpers is still an awesome number of competitors. It was great to catch up again with old friends and skydivers we didn’t see for a long time, good to meet the new guys competing at their first World Meet.
The level of flying gets so much higher every year and every victory gets harder and harder.
##Z-Hills Swoop Pond
I visited Z-Hills once before, in 2008, and I remember the old ‘Stiletto-pond’, as someone called it. Back then, you had to fly the pond in another direction, meaning you had to abort a good swoop because otherwise, you’d hit the hangar. Well, they definitely did an outstanding job on rebuilding the pond, making it one of the nicest and safest ponds I’ve been to so far. ‘Nice’ because it’s huge and ‘safe’ because the shore is smooth and the landing area is pretty soft. Skydive City was a perfect host for the event. As friendly, cosy and skydive-minded as ever, they did everything they could to make it ‘Swoopers-Paradise’.
##Training
The closer we came to the competition, the harder the training days got. First load around 8am, last load around 6pm due to sunset times. Cessnas flying all day long… the last week before the games started, even the Twin Otter was flying a bunch of loads every day. It was hard to get in 10 jumps a day, but if you were prepared to get there early and to stay late, you managed to do them. On an irregular basis, sometimes with only 15 minutes in between, sometimes more than an hour. But that’s a good training, actually. On a competition day, the rotation between two rounds can be quick or… it can take hours.
Anyway, some people need more training on site (like myself) than others do, so luckily not everyone wanted to jump as much as possible. Jumping from the morning till the evening has other training advantages also: you train in ‘cold’ circumstances in the morning, ‘hot’ conditions during the day and even ‘sunset’ circumstances in the evening, where the sun beams straight in your face as soon as you enter the course. All this can happen during competition, so you’d better prepare yourself for the worst situation…
##Time to Rumble
Forty training jumps later, with a bad feeling, because training didn’t go as smoothly as I wished, it was time to rumble. We won’t get any better now, so let’s do it! First, the opening ceremony, where all nations and competitors gather together for the official opening of the competition. This event was overshadowed by a demonstration jump where two skydivers stacked together, one with a giant US flag. A couple of seconds before they should land, the top jumper turned away from the lower jumper to finalize his approach. Apparently their pilot chutes were tangled together and they both hit the ground pretty hard. Not deadly-hard, but at least broken-bones-hard.
The show must go on and the opening ceremony continued, although it became a little surreal. Afterwards we learned that one guy had a shoulder injury, while the other one suffered some more broken bones. Awesome to know both will survive and hopefully fully recover.
After the ceremonies, a competitors’ meeting was held to define the exit order. The last questions were answered by the Meet Director and as from then, the games to define the World Champion in Canopy Piloting were ON!
##Game Rules
Actually, there are three sub-titles to define as a Canopy Piloting competition exists of three events: Dragging Distance, Speed and Zone Accuracy. The main goal is to fly through a 1.5m high and 10m wide gate in every event, but this is not enough. In Distance you have to touch the water in front of the gates, fly through the gates, stay below 1.5m for at least the first 50m of flight and… fly as far as possible. The score here is measured in meters. For Speed you have to hit the gates as tight as possible, make a carve turn in the 75° angled course and finally exit another set of gates at the end of the course, 70m further. The time measured between your entry and exit is your score (in seconds).
For Zone Accuracy, some people put their Peregrines and Petras back in the closet, as you don’t need or want to fly as hard, far and fast as possible. Again you have to fly through the gates, drag four water zones and land in a 2m by 2m box without touching down (stand up). If you manage to do this, you get 100 points. If you don’t drag all water gates, if you land in another zone or you don’t stand up, you get fewer points.
Three rounds per event, so we don’t need breathtaking mathematics to find out we need to jump nine rounds… meaning we have to pass a lot of gates in order to end with a nice overall result!
In all three events, the competitor with the best performance in a particular round gets 100%. All other competitors get a percentage in proportion to that result. In total there is 900% to win.
#Speed
Tomorrow morning, 7AM we start with Speed. Everyone at the DZ around 6.30AM. Yeah, that’s early… According to the weather forecast, we should have two days with nice weather, so the organization wants to finish the meet in two days. After some injuries during training, 102 competitors started the competition. Only Twin loads, twenty competitors per load, meaning they needed five (and a bit) Twin Otter lifts per round. Five competitors per pass, so four passes per plane. Exit altitude is 6,000ft, meaning we got more separation than we are used to while training with 5,000ft exit altitude. Comfortable altitude, but with these parachutes you are on the ground pretty quick anyways.
The first Speed round didn’t feel good for me, I flew a bad line and I even thought I missed the gate. It was easy conditions though, almost no winds and clear skies. Apparently it was not super bad and I posted a 2.647s on the scoreboard. Some guys already had to deal with rejumps caused by equipment failure. A bummer to start with, but… that’s the game.
Bye bye Peregrine 67 and hello Optimum 106
All right, round number two now. I got to get a swooper’s worst nightmare during competition: a cutaway due to heavy line twists in my Peregrine. I tried to fight the line twists out of the canopy, but with those wings and wing loadings of more than 3,0 you don’t want the spins to knock you out before you are able to cut away and deploy your reserve. So, bye bye Peregrine 67 and hello Optimum 106. You are not allowed to swoop the course with a reserve canopy – although it swoops nicely 😉 – so I got to use a rejump also. You only can have one rejump for parachute equipment failures such as cutaways, so hopefully all other rounds, my parachutes will open nice… An extra stress-factor, but that’s also part of the game.
Strong upper winds managed to blow my canopy miles and miles away from the DZ, but to be honest, there was no time at all to think about that. The rules say that you have to be ready to jump in the normal rotation, meaning that I only had 45 minutes to figure out how I should fix this problem.
Luckily I could borrow Brian Vacher’s Peregrine 67 and luckily I had my second rig with me. A quick pack-job while other competitors were attaching the canopy to my harness helped me to get to my plane. Last minute though, but who cares, I made it! Luckily the canopy opened up nice, luckily the risers‘ length was pretty similar to mine and luckily I didn’t mess up the jump. I scored a solid 2.575s. Happy feeling after a super stressful hour. Hell yeah, the game is not over… yet!
A little before noon we had to jump Speed round three and by then we had to deal with quite some downwind. It was a bit more difficult than the jumps before as the wind died down every now and then. Of course, this counts for all participants and the game is to estimate this as good as possible. I expected a little more downwind than there actually was, causing my parachute to level out early before I entered the course. Still managed to fly the whole course, but super slow. The scoreboard showed a 2.905s. It felt way slower, so actually I am happy the damage is not worse…
The top contenders flew times up to 2.240 (fastest time). Curt Bartholomew managed to get the gold medal. His slowest jump was a 2.360… Thomas Dellibac from the PD Factory Team ended second and Eric Philippe from France got the bronze medal. I finished in 28th place. Not that good, but seeing the circumstances were I had to deal with a cutaway and the ‘bad’ third jump, I was moderately satisfied with the scores. Anyway, Speed is in the bag, let’s focus on Distance now!
#Distance
A lunch break, a rebuild of the course and a wind hold later the Distance-game started. The wind lowered down to less than the maximum allowed windspeed of 7m/s, but there still was some wind. The direction was cross-down on the course, meaning we definitely had the winds in our favor. I flew 133.40m in the first round and 122.23m in the second one. The first round, Pablo Hernandez from the PD Factory Team flew an incredible 167.90m, setting a new world record. The highest score in the second round was a nice 146.07, flown by Cornelia Mihai from the UAE. Great performances!
The organization was forced to call it a day, due to the sunset sneaking in. A busy day has come to an and. But another one will follow tomorrow! Three rounds of Zone Accuracy planned, starting from 7am…
#Zone Accuracy
So happened the day after. It seemed to be no-wind to downwind conditions, so all competitors jumping different canopies are hooking up their ‘slowest’ canopies. I jumped my Comp Velocity 79 at a wing loading of 2.35 and it worked out not that bad. It felt like a big truck, though. Hard to imagine, but yes, the Velocity can feel like a big slow student canopy once you’re used to flying ultra high performance canopies.
Every round I dragged all four watergates. I landed respectively in zones 5, 6 and 4. The second jump I softly touched the minus zones, which results in a deduction of your points. The first round the winds were pretty low, the second round it started to pick up and the third round we had to deal with quite some downwind. Every round I moved my set-up point a little in the direction of Orlando and… it worked out. At least I was satisfied with the place where I came out of my turn and where I rolled out. The touchdown itself was more difficult and I didn’t manage to stand it up at any jump. A bummer, but it is what it is.
I scored a 74, a 64 and a 67. No super scores, but seeing the conditions I was again moderately satisfied. I finished up 19th in Zone Accuracy. Downwind is also downwind for the top contenders. They also had problems with putting down their canopies where they wanted it to come down. Some guys flew way too fast and injured themselves while trying to get rid of their speed and energy and in the mean time trying to manage keeping their canopies in the course. Pablo Hernandez hurt himself and unfortunately had to quit the last round.
Traditionally the Zone Accuracy event podium is unpredictable and it wasn’t different this time. Kevin Walters from Australia in first, Kieran Baldwin from New Zealand in second and Curt Bartholomew from the US in third place.
But… One more Distance Round to come before the fat lady sings.
#Distance
Same scenario as the day before: lunch break, preparation of the Distance course by the judges and again a wind hold. We also got a new exit order for the final round, meaning all competitors will jump in reversed order, with the competitor in the lead jumping at the very end. This is not a mandatory rule, but everyone likes it this way because on the one hand all competitors with about the same ranking have pretty much the same weather circumstances and on the other hand it keeps exciting till the very last end of the competition.
I was honored to be part of the fifth and last load of the competition, as my current overall ranking at that time was 13th. Of course it’s always a great feeling to fly against the top guys. I scored 123.10m. In general I was happy with my Distance performance and in the end I finished up 13th in Distance. Nicholas Batch from Alter Ego had nothing to lose because of another zero and he pushed the limits. He did it the way you have to do it and he managed to fly another World Record of 169.19m. What a performance, incredible…!
Most of the other top contenders flew the last round safe and smooth, protecting their ranking. Some of them pushed their limits and scored a zero, while others managed to improve some places in the ranking. That’s the game, that’s the game!
The Distance podium holds Jason Sanders (US) from team Alter Ego, Cornelia Mihai (UAE) and Julien Guiho (FRA) from the PD Factory Team. Julien jumped the last round with lots of pain in his back from a rough touchdown in the last Accuracy round. Incredible he still was able to keep up with the others, saving his place in the ranking.
#Overall
And now the fat lady has sung! The overall podium counted Curt Bartholomew (USA) in first, Julien Guiho (FRA) of the PD Factory Team in second and Cornelia Mihai (UAE) in third. I got home satisfied with my 11th place overall result.
It's great to see a woman on the World Championship podium. It just goes to show that success isn't gender related in CP; it comes as a direct result of hard work, constant training and an uncompromising desire to succeed. Cornelia is a machine and deserves her place in history.
##And Finally
With my Peregrine: an honest elderly couple found it in their back yard a couple of days after the event and brought it back to the DZ. GREAT! Again thank you to everyone who supported me and especially to my sponsors: Vigil, Performance Designs, UPT, Cookie, Larsen & Brusgaard and Skydive Flanders! You guys rock, this way of life isn’t possible without your support! Now looking onwards to the World Cup of Canopy Piloting 2015 in Canada!
FAI World Canopy Piloting Championships & PD Tveir Tvö 2014 Official
