Day two dawned with a wind shift which again ended up in highly favourable conditions, with the wind pumping down the distance course.  The crowd erupted when Cedric Rios (France) crushed the world record by nearly 6 meters when he posted a 177.99m swoop. We had to stop after two rounds though because of the number of re-jumps due to cutaways and missed loads. 

Accuracy started early on day 3, and saw a major upset on jump 1 when Cedric Rios missed the entry gates, and so took himself out of overall medal contention; even thought he had grabbed gold in distance and bronze in speed. A similar and massively surprising missed entry gate for Curt Bartholemew the next morning on the final round of distance also took this overall gold contender to 10^th spot at the end of the competition. 

When the final scores were in the overall standings were : -(Gold)  Nick Batch, USA - (Silver) Cornelia Mihai, UAE - (Bronze) Mo Baker, UAE. Unsurprisingly then, the host national of UAE also took Gold in the team event!

So how did our guys do? For Warren Hitchcock this was his first ever international swoop comp, and his cool head got him to 55^th place overall out of 97 competitors, with one missed entry gate in accuracy keeping him out of the top 30. He was also hot on the heels of Matteo Pagani, who finished 52^nd in only his second international competition – having place 70^th in Canada last year. Not only were we impressed by this massive improvement, but he also managed to capture the judges favour in the Freestyle event which took place after the competition. Matty picked up bronze by dazzling the crowds with his crazy tricks. But top spot in our delegation went once more to our current National Champion, Chris Teague. Consistency and Big Match Temperament got our superstar into the 19^th spot overall in his first FAI event since 2013.  Unfortunately Billy Sharman had to withdraw due to injury, but was a massive help in getting the team manifested and action ready. Proudly sponsored by themselves, the team looked great in matching caps and shirts throughout training and competition. Given that they are among only a handful of competitors who don’t skydive for a living, their 6^th place overall is nothing short of amazeballs. I know they are all inspired to achieve great things in Poland at World Championships in July 2018 and look forward to reporting back on their achievements. 

For more information and competition results, visit https://www.fai.org/CPWC2017

This year, there was a massive interest in the 8 way formation skydiving camp run by Amy Kirtland. With 2 solid days of loads booked for 8 ways and skydivers with as little as 130 skydives were paired with experienced coaches to ensure successful 8 way skydives.

Based on a bad weather day on the Saturday, the Balloon and Helicopter were unfortunately cancelled, but Sunday more than made up for the loss of loads on the Saturday with three aircraft flying skydivers.

103 registered skydivers managed 57 loads and 466 descents over the weekend.

2 successful 16 way skydives allowed 6 new skydivers to achieve their D licence requirements. 13 8 Way loads were jumped on the weekend.

Sunday morning saw 2 attempts of the 24 way formation. The first attempt had 1 skydiver out by breakoff, and it was the second attempt that showed the beautiful formation of a bird in the sky over Carletonville.

This successful 24 way formation was achieved with the skilled formation flying of Johno Gouws, Grant Timms, Justin Van As and Cyril Pierce. Excellent controlled flying contributed to the overall success of the skydive and record.

The final outcome was an official PASA recognized record of 24 South African Skydivers and 2 Camera men. The official paperwork had to be submitted prior to the jump, with each skydiver having a specified slot. It had to be verified by the SSA judges to confirm it as an official record. The judges were Claire King, Dirk Venter, Michael Panaino and Mohan Chudalayandy.

The skydivers on the record jump were: Paul Marcellin, John Williamson, Fritz Schoeman, Beverly Cosslett, Andre d’Argent, Pamela Russell, Amy Kirtland, Bruce Tait, Warren Dent, Debby Vliegenthart , Eugene Potgieter, Bradley Curnow, Stefan Griesel, Andrew Yorke, Charl Coleman, Ian van den Berge, Yolandi van den Berge, Ilke Greeff, Michael Walker, Gerrie Peyper, Greg Waspe, Jessica Langlands and Karl Meyer. The Videographers were Ryan Weeks and Nicholas Helfrich.

Apart from the great Formation Skydiving 8 way camp, 16 way skydives and of course the 24 way record, the wingsuiters managed to do some great flock dives with cat jumps being passed with coach Hendri Liebenberg taking the reins.

Some great hybrid and tube jumps were enjoyed by the Freeflyers as seen in the pics.

All in all the event was a success with no injuries or incidents being reported.

The food donations were all collected and distributed to the SAFW Carltonville this year. This is an old age home in the area that is battling financially, so the food supplies were really appreciated. A big thank you to everyone who contributed.

Skydive Parys were brilliant hosts and not only did they ensure that we had fun in the sky, but also on the ground. The weekend was run very professionally, from the first load each morning, all the way to last rounds in the evening.                                      

Arriving at Skydive Parys for a coaching event is always welcoming with great facilities and a team ready to accommodate just about anything, Thank you Amy and Steven.

The timing and management of the weekend was flawless.

The AE committee had been planning this event for a while and got in touch with the FS committee to see how we could maximise the coaching, Bailey and Carmen jumped at it and offered their services.

I even manged to retire the free fly suit at the end of the day on Saturday to put together an 8-way for some licence requirements. We started the weekend out nice an early with the first AE briefing happening at 07:00 in prep for the first load at 08:00.

Unfortunately due to some car troubles and rig troubles two of the students didn’t make it to the DZ. This wasn’t a problem at all as we had two dedicated students waiting to grab the slots.

We managed to get a total of 10 AE coaching loads in on the Saturday and another 7 in on the Sunday and between Steven and Renier, I’m not sure who snatched up the most loads but the progression was amazing.

On the Sunday we had Gerrie and Johnny who joined us but unfortunately due to the weather we could not get all the jumps in.

Steven CAT 2 AE & CAT 3 AE

Renier CAT 2 AE

Johnny CAT 3 AE

Gerrie CAT 2 AE Jump 1 complete

Steven after smashing his CAT 2 & CAT 3 in AE even assisted me in a C-Licence attempt for Johnny.

Solid flying guys, keep it up. Let’s do it again! 

Warren Hitchcock, D925

Licences

A7618

Ratings