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In the beginning of the nineties, some skydivers were experimenting with different freefall positions. These were based on manoeuvres taken from acrobatics and ice-skating. At approximately the same time, others were trying to jump with surfboards tied to their feet. Both activities captured the attention of the media and local organisations stepped in to organise competitions. The World Freestyle Federation created a set of competition rules and organised championships under her auspices.
In 1994, the International Parachuting Commission (IPC) established a working group in order to incorporate freestyle into her activities. This resulted next year in the creation of the IPC committee for freestyle. Another year later, skysurfing was included. The WFF rules were adopted and the 1st World Cup and 1st World Championships of freestyle and skysurfing were held in Efes, Turkey, in 1996 and 1997 respectively. The 2nd World Cup was held in Évora, Portugal in september 1998. The 2nd World Championships were held in Corowa, Australia.
Freestyle skydiving and Skysurfing consist of a series of compulsory and free routines performed during 7 skydives. Teams consist of a performer and a cameraflyer and have separate male and female categories. The freefall images of the cameraflyer are used for judging the performances. All two events show a wide variety of skills, using axes in all three dimensions. Judging criteria are difficulty, execution, artistic and camerawork.
Freeflying is the latest event in sport parachuting. Freeflying is the only event which incorporates all dimensional axes during the freefall part of a parachute jump. First tried by Olav Zipser in the beginning of the nineties he soon found that many people wanted to do the same he did: to be able to control your body and enjoy the sky in all possible positions. The most popular position though is the so called "head-down" position. Jumpers fall with their head towards the earth, seeing the whole world upside down. Needless to say, this is more difficult than it sounds as the most relaxed position puts you on your belly.
Soon after freeflying was invented, people started to compete. Several formats were tried by various organisers. The main component though is that all acts are filmed by a freefall videographer. Pete McKeeman from SkySports International took up the first serious freeflying events. Later, Olav Zipser followed with the "Space Games". The formats tried were 3-way teams, human pylon racing, manoeuvrability races with a skyball as reference and more.
The International Parachuting Commission (IPC) viewed these developments and took action in 1998. At the IPC meeting in Canberra 2000 this resulted in the inclusion of freeflying as an official event. The adopted format is the a 3-way team, one of the members being the videographer. The event consists of 7 jumps, 2 of which are compulsory routines and 5 free routines. Jumps will be scored by a panel of 5 judges, the compulsories on control of the 4 drawn compulsory moves, the free rounds on technical and presentation.
The first worldcup freeflying was held in Eloy, Arizona, USA in November 2000 while the first world championships was held in Granada, Spain during the 2nd World Air Games, June 2001.
Top teams are currently training full time and making more than 1000 jumps a year. This high dedication and quality results in extremely spectacular freefall footage. All this footage is gathered at IPC competitions on high quality tapes and available to the media.
