Final Day of the World Cup of Indoor Skydiving

Today was the third and final day of the 1st World Cup of Indoor Skydiving. The final results, together with a judged video for each flight, are available at the relevant link above.  The final rounds were conducted with a huge number of spectators in attendance and the atmosphere was electric, although there was not much risk of a change in the final ranking in FS.   Flying kicked off with FS Open followed by FS Female.  The two rounds were rapidly completed and the judges kept up pretty well with the scoring. FS Open was won by the Bad Boys from the Czech Republic and Female FS was won by Aerokart Deep Blue from France.  After a break when the FAI Officials were given another opportunity to fly, the Artistic Events took off.  Judging AE is slower than FS so while waiting for the scores to come out, the iFly staff gave a brilliant demonstration of what can be done in a tunnel.  The final round brought some change to the Freestyle scores with Olga Bakulina from Russia slipping from second place to third, replaced by Collective Freestyle (Michael Sylva Jr).

The first World Records in Indoor Skydiving have been set with the French girls team taking both the General and the Female category for their performance in round 8 with 37 points and the Junior record has been set by the French Junior Team Aerokart Akademie 1 with 17 points performed in round 7. SDC Standard took the World record in VFS with 31 points in round 3.

At the end of the competition, while the final Artistic scores were being collated, all the Juniors went into the tunnel and performed a 10 way star.

The prize giving was held in a function room at the Renaissance hotel and was followed by a Champagne toast and dinner. In addition to the normal rankings, a special mention was made of the Junior teams who were honoured with a plaque each engraved with their name, as well as a special award to the team with the highest results in 4-way FS. This was attributed to the French girls team, Aerokart Deep Blue for their impressive score. If there had not been a female ranking, the girls would have scored first and third in the open event. Graeme Windsor took the floor to conclude the competition, he thanked all the participants for their presence at this historical event and especially thanked Axel Zohmann for his work in making this event possible. The FAI Anthem was played while the FAI flag was lowered.  The flag was given to the organiser as a souvenir of the event.

The party that followed allowed some of the participants to show off their gymnastic skills and many photos were taken of the various national delegations. The FAI is grateful to iFly Austin for their hard work in making this event possible and for the excellent performance by all their staff.  Regardless of the position, official or competitor, winner or not, everyone will leave Austin with a good feeling and conscious of the fact that they were part of the first ever First Category Event in Indoor Skydiving and the first IPC competition to include under 13s.

Report from Gillian Rayner (FAI Controller)