##Who are all these French kids in the tunnel and how did they learn to fly so well?
I had a conversation with Amelie Tirman, who is judging here. She is coaching one of the teams, and member of Aerokart Deep Blue, who won the World Championship in 2010. The project was begun 3 years ago by Françoise Simons Himouchi, an Aerokart Deep Blue team member and director of Aerokart.
They started with 10 children involved. The goal of the project was to train young flyers, with the ultimate goal of training World Champions. All of the youngsters involved have parents who are skydivers. Aerokart rans tryouts for the project. They sponsor the teams and pay half, the family pay the other half. In the beginning some non-skydiving parents brought their children to the selection – but they baulked at the amount of money that is involved! Who can blame them?!
I am very proud to be part of this project. It's exciting and it's a lot of fun!
##How many teams are there?
They have 3 teams in all. One team whose ages are around 10-11, they are in single A, coached by Mathieu Cannesson. The second team in AA are aged around 11-12, Marin Ferré is their coach, he is flying with them for this competition (in that attractive large green suit), as one of the team couldn’t make it. The third team is aged 13-14, and started 3 years ago as the first people in the project, they are coached by Amelie normally but, as she is judging here at Inflight Dubai, she watches the videos and Françoise relays the important points to the team
The academy has also added two teams of parents to the mix! Blue Phenix and Last Minute are the family of the flyers, since they have to be here to accompany their children, the figured they might as well enter themselves. (Their children are beating them! .. although they do have a lot more tunnel time and world champion coaches!) They enter many competitions when the kids do, they do about 30 mins of tunnel just before the meet for a last minute training session, and enjoy flying themselves as well as watching their jewels.
##What’s the competition history so far?
The Academy (AK’ Démie) sent two teams to the World Cup in iFly Austin a year ago, and took first and second in the junior category. At that time there were 10 children in the project so they had two teams of 5, and rotated them through the 4 slots. Aerokart really wanted their protegeés to become junior World Champions in the first FAI Indoor World Championships at Prague, but this was not possible as they only had 2 junior teams so they could not win
##How different is it to coach children?
“Coaching kids is amazing”, said Amelie. “You ask them to do something and then they do it. Marin said the same thing. I thought it would be difficult to teach them B slots but no, they picked it up straight away. In the beginning, the 10-year olds were not ready for a B slot but now the 13-14 year-olds are very ready. They are super happy to fly together. We started to have some teenage problems with relating to each other, normal team stuff, but they worked it out like adults do.”
##What’s the hardest thing with coaching kids?
“When they are around 10-11, it’s hard to get them to focus a long time, anything more than 5 or 10 minutes. You have to speak only for a very short time and brief them on the most important thing, just ignore the rest, or they don’t take in anything. Also, a problem is sometimes schoolwork gets in the way, like one of the children has an exam during the world Challenge so Marin will be flying in his slot. School has to come first!”
##How do they react to competition pressure?
“Last year in Austin they had lots of busts in competition, but this year are doing much better. The ‘senior’ [13-14 year old] team did the best 19s and 21s they have ever done!”
What is different to coaching adults?
“We don’t creep, we just stand up and walk the jump. Here we have been creeping a bit more but it’s hard to get them to concentrate, they are easily distracted. We do not debrief with the video, they would be just looking out the window. Instead they get out and watch the flight, then I tell them the main points. Or we do in-tunnel instruction. The rest is really nice, it’s a joy to coach the young minds, they learn so quickly and have a lot of energy.”
##What’s next?
“The plan now is this competition [Inflight Dubai], then Aerokart competition (5-6 March) then World Challenge (1-2 April). We might see one team at the Wind Games as the parents are keen but it’s not in the overall plan.”
##So, will they become skydivers when they are old enough?
“For sure one of the children is going to jump, he is so keen, he can hardly wait till he’s old enough.. for the rest, we will have to see, It’s their choice. When they are 16 they will have been in the project 5 years, which is a long time for a teenager. We’ll have to wait and see!”
