International World Games Association : Air Sports

Sports of The World Games

What started as an act of daring, with Frenchman André Garnerin putting Leonardo da Vinci's concept of a parachute to the ultimate test by leaping from a balloon in 1797, has developed into a legitimate and highly diversified air sport: parachuting or skydiving.

With athletes reaching horrendous speeds on their three-dimensional field of play, skydiving has turned into the fastest non-powered sport on, and above, Earth.

Skydiving: fast and intense! Just two watchwords commonly associated with the sport that is rapidly growing in popularity. Add 'free' and 'fun' and you end up with the key ingredients of a sport that tends to reflect the way of life of those practicing it. In trend with the XY generations!

Skydiving can be the most trendy lifestyle sport, but at the highest level of competition, to those aiming for true excellence, it is an athletic challenge. One that depends on physical conditioning and mental training, on hard work and stern discipline, and on imagination.

All of the sport's many disciplines use the same piece of equipment: the parachute, a fabric device with cords supporting a harness, allowing athletes to descend safely through the air. In fact, two parachutes are worn, always, to give a truly comforting margin of safety: a main and a reserve. Distinctions between the disciplines are made by determining how the main parachute is used.

In some disciplines, the athletes' ability to control the deployed parachute forms the essence of their sporting performances, while in others, in the skydiving disciplines, the parachute is only used to land safely; the sporting performance is completed prior to its deployment.

Parachuting and skydiving at The World Games 2005

The parachuting/skydiving events on the Official Sports Program of The World Games 2009 Kaohsiung:

4-Way Formation Skydiving (Mixed); Accuracy Landing (Mixed); Canopy Formation (Mixed); Canopy Piloting (Mixed); Freeflying (Mixed)

Skydivers are capable of reaching speeds of up to 500 km/h in freefall. Terminal velocity in a head-down and streamlined body position! Through the forces of gravity alone, these athletes engage in what is arguably the fastest non-powered sport ... until ram-air foils slow their descents. But even then they don't let up on the accelerator.

For an athlete to control his or her body in a truly three-dimensional environment, and for maneuvering the square parachutes at high speeds and close to the ground, supreme concentration and agility are prerequisite.

Canopy piloting, a discipline which evolved from advances made in the aerodynamic design of inflatable wings, and freeflying, the no-holds-barred aerial challenge, put in their second appearance in The World Games. Canopy formation premieres in 2009 Kaohsiung.

Spirits are flying high as the world's top athletes swoop down from the wild blue yonder. The spectators get to follow the skydivers' celestial exploits close-up on a giant outdoor screen set up at the drop zone in the Metropolitan Park. Good vibes, cool sounds and the spectacular action make everyone wish for a set of wings!

Keqing Wang (CHN) came in 14th in the mixed-gender Accuracy Landing of 2005 Duisburg. Men and women generally compete on equal terms in all air sports.

Parachuting/Skydiving