Beyond the Bucket List: Skydiving as a Competitive Sport

Key Takeaways
Skydiving has evolved from early experimental jumps and military strategy into a recognized extreme sport with global participation. It is considered a sport due to its competitive structure, rigorous training, and professional athlete community. Modern skydiving includes a wide range of disciplines across both freefall and canopy flight, each requiring specialized skills. While not currently in the Olympics, skydiving maintains a strong competitive culture and continues to grow in popularity worldwide.

Skydiving’s prominence in popular culture as an adrenaline-fueled experience makes people wonder: Is skydiving a sport? Or, more accurately, is skydiving an extreme sport? The answer is, yes! Skydiving is considered an extreme, competitive, and recreational sport, not just a thrill-seeking activity. 

Let’s dig a little deeper than first time tandem experiences and even beyond the learning phase of Accelerated Freefall (AFF) to understand the ins and outs of the sport of skydiving.

When Did Skydiving Start?

The very first skydive was made on October 22, 1797 by André-Jacques Garnerin from a balloon over Paris. Since then, the act of jumping out of an aircraft has evolved in almost unbelievable ways. 

The early days of modern skydiving were rooted in military operations, starting in the early 1900s and hitting a peak during WWII. From there, adventurous individuals began altering surplus military equipment for recreational use – and civilian skydiving culture was born! 

So when did skydiving become a sport? While the first competitive parachute meets were held in the 30s, it wasn’t until the 50s – after the National Parachute Jumpers and Riggers (later the United States Parachute Association – that the first World Parachuting Championships were held. A few years later, Jacques-André Istel developed the first parachute designed specifically for sport rather than military use.

By the 1960s and 70s, these civilian jumpers had built an entire culture that included an international skydiving community, boogies (fun skydiving gatherings), and regular competitions. 

What Makes Skydiving a Sport?

Modern day sport skydiving is just as intense, inspirational, and demanding as any other athletic competition out there. Skydiving competitions range from newbie to professional, and every level in between.

The top skydiving athletes train tirelessly in the sky and in wind tunnels to build their skills and endurance, and compete nationally and even internationally in their disciplines. They earn sponsorships, teach world renowned courses, and are famous within the world of skydiving. Professional skydivers win medals, stand on podiums, and are looked up to as the pinnacle of what the sport can be. 

If jumping out of an airplane is a sport, is skydiving in the Olympics? Skydiving is not currently featured as an Olympic sport, but that doesn’t make it any less of an athletic competition! There are plenty of sports that haven’t made their way to the Olympic stage … yet.

What are the Competitive Disciplines in Skydiving?

Competitive skydiving can be split into two categories: freefall and canopy flight. While students and fun jumpers typically focus on all parts of the jump equally, competitive skydivers train very specific skills in order to be at the top of their game. 

Freefall

• Formation Skydiving (FS)
  Previously called Relative Work, this discipline is the oldest in skydiving and involves jumpers maintaining a belly-to-earth position in freefall while building groups by holding onto each other.
  
• Freefly
  Freeflying is a much faster form of flight and includes positions like back flying, sit flying, and head down flying. Freefliers can also build groups, both horizontally and vertically! 

• Freestyle
  Freestyle can be best described as dancing in the sky, and typically includes one or two people executing highly choreographed and complicated movements in the sky. 

• Angle Flying
  This is one of the movement disciplines in skydiving where jumpers will pitch their body at different angles to cover vast horizontal distances in freefall, usually in large groups.

• Wingsuiting
  Perhaps one of the most visually recognizable disciplines in skydiving, wingsuiting involves wearing a nylon suit that has arm and leg wings to increase glide and decrease fall rate. Wingsuiting can also be split into multiple disciplines like aerobatics, distance, and flocking.

Canopy Flight

• Swooping
  This discipline involves canopy pilots flying very small canopies at high rates of speed very close to the ground, and is easily one of the most exciting disciplines to watch. Swoopers complete a series of turns that increase their speed so that they can skim along the grass or a pond, going for speed, distance, or style.

• Canopy Formation Skydiving (CFS)
  Formerly known as Canopy Relative Work, or CRW (“Crew”), Canopy Formation Skydiving is the oldest canopy centric discipline in the sport. CFS pilots use their feet to dock onto other canopies to build formations in the sky and fly as one large, connected group. 

• Flocking
  This discipline can be considered the high performance canopy version of CFS, where small, fast canopies come together without touching to fly in a large flock across the sky. 

• Cross Relative Work (XRW)
  XRW is one of the most collaborative disciplines in skydiving, bringing together freefall and canopy flight into one jump. Wingsuiters will fly alongside or connected to canopy pilots and execute exciting and daring maneuvers before separating to deploy their own parachute and land. 

Skydiving offers something for everyone – whether you want to have fun with your friends or experience the motivation and work ethic of a professional athlete, you can find your home amongst the clouds. 

Ready to get sporty in the sky? Book a tandem today and get started on your skydiving journey!