What an incredible way to showcase the sport we all love so dearly… SWOOP FREESTYLE FAI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 2018 was, without a shadow of doubt, an impressive advert for the sport. Unlike all the other major skydiving competitions on the international calendar, SWOOP FREESTYLE FAI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS is an invitational event for 18 of the world’s finest pilots from across the globe. Both Chris Teague and Billy Sharman of Skydive Pretoria were invited and hosted at this year’s double venue freestyle series. Both Copenhagen (Denmark) and San Diego (California, USA) turned on the charm, boasting amazing skylines, lakes and marinas for the competitors to express themselves. Every pilot was there to put on a show, competing for top honours for the title of World Freestyle Champion. 

The athletes were required, over a series of 6 jumps (2 training, 2 qualifying and 2 finals), to perform 2 freestyle moves per swoop over a body of water. That may sound simple, however, the competitors were then required to finish their moves on a 6m by 25m floating raft in front of the crowds – FANTASTIC. 

Chris about to land and Billy filming. Photo: Logan Donavon

South Africa can be proud as Chris Teague was representing the country as a competitor and Billy Sharman as an air-to-air cameraman. Billy’s exceptional work was viewed all over the world both live and post-production. A world first live production, across two cities on two continents, with live scoring, was enjoyed by thousands of people from all corners of the earth. 

As Chris Teague’s 1^st SWOOP FREESTYLE FAI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS, the results were strong. In Copenhagen Chris placed 7^th, landing on the raft in both the final rounds. San Diego proved a little more challenging with exciting open water conditions. Chris finished 14^th in San Diego bringing his overall championship position to a tied 11^th. Chris has already commenced with his training for the 2019 series.

Photo: Logan Donavon

Schrödinger's Cat (Quinton Henning and Lé-Ann Prinsloo)  Photo credit: Julie Teague

VFS podium. Photo credit: Peter Lawson. 

After battling it out on Sunday and Monday, Team Carlton-Boom (Christopher Teague and Travis Grosch) took the Gold, with Team Shrödinger's Cat (Quinton Henning and Lé-Ann Prinsloo) taking second place and Team Any Funking Name Wouldn't Do (Travis Baikie and Renier Jansen) taking third place.

We couldn't be more impressed by all the competitors and the skills they demonstrated. At the same time everyone kept it light and took advantage of this learning opportunity. 

We are hopeful that this fuelled some fires for Nationals 2019 and for AE in South Africa.

Full results can be found on InTime Scoring.

Maryke Prinsloo, C1854

The top competitor in each task is awarded 100%, with the other competitors being awarded a percentage, based on their performance relative to the top competitor’s. Accumulated scores of the three rounds are averaged out, to give each competitor a score out of 300.

I arrived in Prostějov on the Thursday before the competition started in order to get some last minute training jumps in and familiarise myself with the DZ’s landmarks. I was very happy to finally meet Alexey Galda (USA) there, as he had been coaching me online for the past few months. Being the only South African there, I was fortunate to be immediately befriended by the German, Italian, Swedish and Australian teams and their friendship and helpful advice, as well as transport to/from the DZ was very welcome, indeed! In my opinion, the true value of attending a world-level event, such as this, lies in the friendships made! No amount of social media activity can ever substitute the real-world interaction that takes place (over a beer, or two, of course!) after a day’s jumping.    

Monday marked the start of the competition, with two official training jumps that were scored by the judges to test the system. What a disaster! During the first training jump, 100% of competitors were given a 50% penalty and during the second training jump, 90%+ of competitors were given a 100% penalty. The chief judge promptly called a technical meeting and explained that he had petitioned the jury to waive competition rule 3.5.4 (deviation from designated flight path), as it would be a farce to have a World Championships with nothing but zeros on the scoreboard. Rule 3.5.3 (of which there were no less than a 126 violations during the course of the competition, would remain in force, but more on this later…)

During the Monday’s first official training jump, I had the (previously unexperienced ;-)) pleasure of test jumping my Smart LPV reserve, after my main canopy tried its best to kill me. This, together with a really violent, out of control wingsuit flatspin during the pre-event training, have made me realise, without a shadow of doubt, the absolute necessity of making the change to a 7-cell, wingsuit-specific main canopy if one is going to be flying high performance wingsuits! Also, SKYHOOK ROCKS!!! (You had to be there to fully appreciate how quickly and line-twist free my reserve opened after the spinning mal from hell…)

Getting the latest gear is prohibitively (read:
extremely!) expensive when you’re paying in
Rands, but thanks to Aerodyne, Squirrel and
Cookie’s support, I was kitted out with the
best! (Photo: DZ Prostějov staff)

Still shell-shocked from the two incidents described above, I flew the first round quite conservatively, but still got decent-enough scores of 241 km/hr, 82.2 seconds (my personal best) and 3717m. Then the lane violation penalty monster (rule 3.5.3, as mentioned above) kicked in, taking 10% off my speed score, 50% off my time score and a whopping 100% off my distance score. Sadly, this put me in last place and ended any chance of me getting a decent placing. At first, I was perplexed at this and couldn’t figure out how these violations could’ve happened, as I had memorised the given flight paths and sacrificed performance in order to focus on navigation. 

After many discussions with fellow competitors and some really superb explanations and advice from Marco Pistolesi (ITA), I finally figured out that the lane violations were a result of the forward throw of the aircraft as well as the crosswind drift making me infringe on the right side of the lane.

This ended up to be the overriding cause of lane violation penalties for most competitors and the general consensus is that marking the centre point of the lane 5 seconds after exit doesn’t allow nearly enough time to complete the turn and counter the effects of the aircraft’s forward throw. Why the powers that be chose to test this new rule at a world championship event was a source of great frustration amongst almost all of the competitors and it left a bad taste. At the competitors meeting after the competition, everyone was in agreement that the implementation of this rule wasn’t properly thought through and it needs to be replaced with another that gives competitors the chance to fly their best performance, without being penalized so harshly. The two main ideas for a replacement rule was to change this time to 10sec after exit, or to fix it at the window entry at 3000m AGL. Either way, there will be some lively debates at the IPC Plenary 2019, I’m sure… 

From the second round, I changed my strategy completely, aiming to overcorrect my turn (120° to the left) as soon as I exited the aircraft and then continue to aim to the left of my designated final reference point and voila, no more penalties after the first task of the second round! Even though it was impossible to make a decent comeback from the 50% and 100% penalties in the first round, I managed to consistently fly better until the final jump, ending up in 55^th place and setting two new FAI African records in the Speed (260.3 km/hr) and Distance (3898m) tasks, both of which were previously held by Waldo Prinsloo.  

Skydive Pretoria is hosting a World Cup in Canopy Piloting in November 2019. Every athlete we have spoken to is extremely excited about coming back to South Africa, after the widely successful 2008 World Champs.

Now the question is, what does it take for South African’s to compete in this incredible event, happening right here on our doorstep?

Step 1: Qualify to compete in the Open Class CP National Championships in 2019. Our MOPs is very clear in terms of the requirements, section 10 stipulates the following requirements to qualify as an Open Class Pilot:

• Have taken part in the Intermediate / Open category at a previous PASA National Championships or SSA sanctioned competition.

• Have done a minimum of 1000 jumps.

• Cleared by a CP Coach for Open Class.

• Completed a 50m course 3 times with 5ft gates over water. Attempts must be pre-declared. A missed attempt will restart the count.

• Weight restrictions as per FAI.

• Competition rules as per FAI.

Step 2: Meet the performance criteria at the CP National Championships, these criteria are documented in the “PASA SSA Nationals Regulations Team Selection and Colours Criteria” document, the longest document name in history. :D

The criteria are as follows:

The selection will then be made on the following ranking order:

• 1st Distance,

• 1st Speed,

• 1st Zone Accuracy,

• 1st Overall,

• 2nd Distance,

• 2nd Speed,

• 2nd Zone Accuracy,

• 2nd Overall.

Competitors who place between 3rd place and 6th place for a World Championships, or 10th place for a World Cup, will have additional qualification criteria to be selected. These competitors must obtain a minimum of 50% of the score of the winner at the South African National Championship.

Up to 2 “wild card” competitors may be selected by the CP committee. This selection will be based on their performance at Nationals and other competitions during that year. The overall score of these 2 competitors must be at least 50% of that achieved by the overall winner at the National Championship.

So there you have it, get training, don’t suck and come compete and represent your country at one of the most entertaining skydiving events in the world.

Matteo Pagani, D943 

All PASA members note:

If you receive an email from the Aero Club like the one below, please ignore it. The Aero Club system is geared to their own financial year-end which is 31 December.

PASA's year-end is 31 March so all PASA memberships remain valid until 31 March annually.

PASA has an agreement with the Aero Club that all PASA members are considered paid-up to 31 March of the following year.