It’s that part of the season where competitive skydiving reaches its crescendo. Having recently celebrated success amongst Langar staff and fun jumpers at the British National Canopy Piloting Championships and the British National Canopy Formation Championships, and with the Wingsuiting World Championships also on this week, we are excited to wish lots of luck to our friends and colleagues at the Formation Skydiving and Artistics World Cup, taking place now in Voss, Norway.
Formation skydiving and vertical formation skydiving at the World Cup
Formation Skydiving, or FS, is the discipline most skydivers will start to hone their skills in after achieving their skydiving licence. By flying in the ‘belly to earth’ configuration, skilled formation skydivers can fly relative to one another to build shapes and complete manouevres.
Historically, the best attended competitive FS events are 4 way, where four performers combine to complete set sequences while being filmed by a fifth ‘camera flyer’. You may also have seen coverage of the formation skydiving record set here at Langar earlier this year, where forty-one skydivers combined to create the UK’s largest sequence of formations.
At the formation skydiving world cup, we will see 4 way and 8 way (eight performers plus one camera flyer) categories.
We will also see Vertical Formation Skydiving, or VFS, at the World Cup. In this form, FS is done on the vertical axis with flyers in a seated, standing or ‘head down’ position. The aim is the same – complete a prescribed set of formations and continue to do so for the competition time to see which team can do the most over 10 rounds.
Artistics at the World Cup
Artistics refers to the disciplines were success is not scored on the number of formations built, but on the creative expression and execution of the participants. It includes freeflying and freestyle, both of which happen on multiple axes and both of which are viewed in terms of difficulty and how well the performers do each move.
There are a combination of rounds, with some requiring performers to perform a set of moves dictated by the competition draw and others allowing ‘free rounds’ where performers put together a choregraphed display to showcase their skills. It’s up to the performers to balance difficulty with execution, as a more difficult move executed poorly can score less than an easier move executed perfectly – and vice versa!
Langar skydivers on the world stage
It’s very exciting for us to see so many Langar based skydivers competing at world level events and this event is no exception. We’re very proud of Langar staff members Emily, Joe, Pete, Cat, Matt and Jodie-Leigh, to name a few, as well as Langar sponsored team Omni and a number of Langar fun jumpers who have trained with us (Alola, NFTO, DNF, Deton8, Ap8thy and Eve&Dan), all attending and representing Team GB.
We’re rooting for you all!