British Skydivers win Gold at World Championships

Added: (Thu Aug 14 2008)

Pressbox (Press Release) - MEDIA ALERT….MEDIA ALERT…MEDIA ALERT…MEDIA ALERT


BRITISH SKYDIVING TEAM WIN GOLD AT
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!!!!!


14th August – Bodyflight Storm, the all female British formation Skydiving team, have just won the 4-way World Championships in female formation skydiving, run at Maubeuge, France.

New World Champions, Claire ‘Sparky’ Scott, Kate Stephens, Hannah Betts and Sarah Smith along with videographer, Gary Wainwright and alternate Tarnya Hollis, led the competition all the way, holding off closest rivals, the USA and France. They also battled with the weather, boarding the Porter aircraft in rainy, windy conditions, and suffering long weather holds which kept them literally on call for 14 hours a day, ready to give the performance of their lives.

For Bodyflight Storm, the World Championships were the culmination of a gruelling, two year training schedule, largely based in California where they have been perfecting their skills with six-time World Champion Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld as their coach. Sarah explained, “It has been an amazing couple of years – the whole team has trained exceptionally hard in the lead up to the World Meet, giving up our normal jobs last year so that we could concentrate on winning a place in the finals - we had to score higher than the reigning world champions in order to do this, which was incredibly tough for a team starting from scratch.”

The World Skydiving Championships is the most important event in the skydiving calendar and only takes place every two years. Bodyflight Storm qualified to represent Great Britain at this prestigious international competition by claiming gold at the 2007 British National Championships, where they beat all teams; male, female and mixed. 4-way skydiving competitions involve teams of four people who aim to build as many different formations as possible in 35 seconds of freefall, after leaving an aircraft at 10,000 feet, about twp miles high. Bodyflight Storm averaged 20, approximately 2 formations per second!!

John Smyth, Chairman of the British Parachute Association, explained: “This fantastic achievement cannot be expressed in words – Bodyflight Storm have spent two years training, making enormous personal sacrifices with limited sponsorship, they are athletes who have won the most important competition in our sport, I would like to congratulate them all”

Team Volairkix, also claimed the bronze medal in the Freefly category. Team members were Mike Carpenter, Adam Mattercola and Andy Newal.

All representing the UK were Team Fusion in the Formation 4-way skydiving Open category, team members were: Simon Catherine, Laura Mclelland, Lynne Murray and Videographer, Allan Thompson.

In the eight way category, the UK was represented by: Ian Hodgkinson, David Ruffell, Philip Curtis, Sacha Chilton, Andrew Pook, Philip Hartree, Andy Scott and Mark Whitehead with Videographer David Butterell and alternate, Martin Soulsby.

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