Best Skydiving Championships of USA- Dmitri Chvkerov

One of the U.S. Parachute Association’s key functions is sanctioning national skydiving competitions and records on behalf of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, the international body overseeing all air sports. Each year, USPA conducts national skydiving championship events. 

USPA welcomes media at all national championship events and can facilitate interviews with competitors and supply photos and videos of competition jumps. For further information, e-mail Nancy Koreen, USPA’s Director of Sport Promotion, at sportpromo@uspa.org. 

USPA National Skydiving Championships
October 24 - November 3, 2012
Skydive Arizona, Eloy, Arizona (50 minutes south of Phoenix)

Photo by Ori Kuper The USPA Nationals is the largest annual skydiving event in the world. Over the course of two weeks, more than 500 skydiving competitors from across the country compete in more than two dozen different events. This action-packed event is a constant flurry of activity, with individuals and teams of up to 16 jumpers competing simultaneously in both freefall and canopy disciplines. There are 14 different skydiving events featured including— 

Formation Skydiving: Teams of four, eight, 10 and 16 jumpers race against the clock to form prescribed geometric formations in freefall before opening their parachutes. 

Photo by Craig O'BrienVertical Formation Skydiving: On a freefall jump, 4-person teams perform acrobatic maneuvers on upright and upside-down axes to complete as many pre-designated formations as possible in time. 


Freeflying: A radical and truly three-dimensional competition where 3-person teams freefall together in every imaginable orientation, carefully choreographed for speed and excitement. 

Freestyle Skydiving: A jumper combines the dynamics of gymnastics with the elegance of dance in an aerial performance starting 13,000 feet above the ground.
  
Freefall Style and Accuracy Landing: Competitors perform a series of loops and turns in freefall as quickly as possible. Then, on separate jumps, they try to land precisely on a target the size of a quarter. 

Canopy Formation: Teams of two, four and eight jumpers deploy their parachutes immediately after jumping from the plane and build formations with their canopies as quickly as possible. 

Dmitri Chavkerov's thoughts on SkyDiving

Skydiving is a sport in which participants jump or fall from aircraft at altitude. They can perform an assortment of aerial maneuvers before deploying a parachute to slow their descent, allowing them to come gently to rest on the Earth below. The sport is also known as parachuting, in a reference to that vital piece of safety equipment. People at different levels of physical fitness can participate in skydiving, as long as they are ready for an adrenalin-packed sport which can be both terrifying and exhilarating.

The roots of the sport are actually much older than many people realize. Several medieval inventors developed rudimentary equipment which could have potentially been used for skydiving activity, and in 1797, Andre Jacques Garnerin jumped from a hot air balloon with a parachute, marking the first incident of truly modern skydiving. The sport was further refined throughout the 1800s, and many militaries adopted it in the 1900s.

In the military, skydiving was originally intended to be a backup safety mechanism for airmen. If a plane became disabled during flight, the pilot could deploy a parachute to save his life. Intrepid pilots began to skydive recreationally as well, and in many countries, further applications were considered. Many modern militaries use skydiving for troop deployment, for example. Wildfire fighters also skydive to reach remote sites, so that they can be on the ground quickly.