Swooping in the World Games and Olympics

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Well this has sure turned into an interesting thread with just as many good points for having pond swooping in the Olympics as not having it. Also, one would think that if pond swooping was in, so then would accuracy jumping. But we know which event the whuffo public would warm up to.

Now I don't know much about the PST, so here's a question for the more knowledgeable. How often are the competitors serious injured and/or killed? If most of the injuries are your run of the mill ankle and knee sprains with some shoulder injuries and concusions thrown in to boot, then it really doesn't sound all that different than some of the skiing disciplines (keeping in mind I have worked on World Cup ski races as a ski patroller and did pick up the odd injured body though it wasn't all that frequent) as well as some of the other interest sports like bobsled, luge and skelton. But if many of the competitors are femuring in and/or dying on a regular basis during Pond Swooping, then I guess it shouldn't be included in the Olympics. Too much gore and bad publicity for the sport (and I do tend to agree with Bill concerning the threat of added regulations).

PS: I'm trying not to flame anyone here, but for the record, skiing is not like skydiving where smaller and smaller skis equate to high performance. With the advent of shaped skis, they have gotten a little smaller since the mid 90s, but traditionally longer skis equals more stability which equals more speed.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[listo 0]

I really don't think that competition regulations have ever regulated normal everyday skydiving operations in any way.

To say that because someone might get hurt in a swoop meet and that being the reason for keeping our sport out of the Olympics or World Games is crazy. Not only that, it is the opinion of people who really don't know all that much about the competition end of things regarding swooping.

If a person doesn't know the current requirements and regulations for something, how can they put it down. It makes me sick to hear all of this BS about keeping swooping out of the public spot light by people that don't even know what it is all about. The requirements to become a PST competitor are really high. Before a person is even allowed to jump in a PST qualifier they have to answer a lot of questions to officials. As far as injuries in competitions go, I don't think that there are that many serious injuries because all of the pilots are top notch and the best at what they do. The PST isn't open to just any Tom, Dick or Harry. The World Games as well as the PST and IPC, and I am sure the Olympic committee as well will have very high standards and the selection process for who will be allowed to compete is going to be very strict.

How can anyone sit back and try to keep a discipline out of the public competition seen just because they are afraid of how it is going to be regulated. If and when serious competition swooping becomes viable for public viewing and regulations regarding it become everyday affairs in the competition scene, then I am going to back it up 100% because I am mature enough to know that competition regulations will never affect the everyday skydiving world. These rules and regs are there to keep competition safe, not affect everyday skydivers.

All I see here are people being afraid of something that they really know nothing about. I would suggest to anyone who feels strongly about this to go read up on the PST competition regulations and then compare those regulations to everyday regulations if there are any that are comparable.

Please quit bashing something that you know nothing about if you are one of the un-informed souls posting on this subject. I personally don't mind if someone has a viable point to make, but unsubstantiated insecurities make for ignorant and moot points.

I would like for anyone to please feel free to make an actual ratio of jumps in competition vs. fatalities in competition and then compare all of this information to the number of registered competitors over a 5 year period and I think that you would find that competition skiing actually has more serious injuries and fatalities per capita. I don't know this for sure, but I am pretty well convinced based off of what I have read that you will find this to be true. Furthermore, I think that comparing comparing competition skiing to competition swooping is an excellent thing considering that both sports involve really high speeds that can kill instantly.

As competition swoopers we all know that there is an inherent risk in what we do. We know that a bad spot of turbulence can ruin our day at any time and we take this into account. Lets look at freestyle skiing, what if a skier hits a spot of ice that isn't visible and causes him to slip on his launch for a double back flip and causes him to land on his head from 30 feet in the air. This person is going to either be paralized or killed yet he is still going to continue to do what he loves both for fun and competition. What happens to a downhill competiton skier if he hits a patch of ice and wipes out at 70 mph and hits a tree. Does this mean that skiiing to fast is going to become illegal.....give me a break.

There is no way that competition swooping regulations will ever affect the skydiving community as a whole. The only thing that might change would be the competition regulations themselves. After all, Dale Earnhart's fatality hasn't caused state DMVs to say that we need to wear a different kind of seat belt or better yet say that we need to decrease speed limits. I don't know about where you are from, but the speed limits are constantly going up around where I am as well as the interstates.

Think about it.

Live today as tomorrow may not come

[PhreeZone 20]

The issue is the FAA. They regulate us directly. The DMV has no control over Nascar, and as such race tracks have no interaction with the DMV and DOT regulations. They regulate themselfs. Now your looking at having to bring the US standerds in line with the rest of the world and guess what... some countries limit canopy choices, that means the US would have to do the same. As for skiing they can design the courses to be as fast or as slow as they need them to be. They also have a fairly wide safety margin built in to prevent someone from hitting a tree or flying off the mountian.

I don't think it will ever fly as an olympic sport simply for security concerns among other things. There is usually a ban on light aircraft traffic around the Olympics and the surrounding area. Now for every flight you will have to go through a full security check and there will be regulations on the flights and jump conditions for security. I don't think your about to see some swoop pond going up in the middle of an olympic stadium. So now your having to go out side the airspace to fly, and since its in the FAR's that there is not flying above an assembly of people lower then a certian height you now have to push the crowd back even more. Your taking away everything that the purpose of doing it is for. Best example of the general interest level is at WFFC you had 2500 people but no more then about 100 showed up to watch the swoop compitition. And that was the market that is most likely to watch.

Red Bull has the right idea, set up an invite only exibitions all around the country and pull in local talent then make a TV show about it. Red Bull Wings over Chicago honestly got me excited and more courious about paragliding.

Not to mention the Olympic committes in the past have been very negitive towards anything that required non human power to do. (Ski lifts are a convience if you wanted to you could climb the hill and ski down it.) Motorcycle racing and waterskiing were denied just in 2000 for the 2004 games since they required motors (among lack of popularity accourding to the committee).

Motorcross or surfing has a better chance of being an Olympic sport then swooping does at this point. Taken from the International Water ski federations page:

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However, promotion alone is not enough, the entire waterskiing family (over 89 federations and more than 50,000,000 skiers around the world) has made petitions and written support letters to convince the IOC that we really should become Olympic. It is important that the IOC sees that waterski is a popular sport all over the world.

I'm pretty sure there are not 50,000,000 skydivers in the world. Waterskiing has trying to get into the Olympics (was a demonstration sport in Munchen) since the early 90's and they are no closer then chess is to getting in.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[listo 0]

lmao......I don't need an airplane to swoop, all I need is a 3,000 cliff bub. I can track and pull at 2,000 and I am golden baby!

Water skiing directly needs a motor to achieve the sport. Swooping doesn't really have to have a plane and further more I really don't want to be holding onto a rope attached to a plane while I am trying to swoop. Now as far as the location goes, who says that the event of swooping has to be right in the middle of everything that is going on? Personally I think that it should be at a nearby location but not directly in the middle of the events.

Live today as tomorrow may not come

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Sam

Thanks for info about the PST. I do fall into the "Ignorant about the PST" category, but rest assured I will start paying more attention to it from here on out because while I'm nothing more than a novice swooper (who really doesn't want to hurt or kill himself), I am very much interested in the discipline and would love to attend a PST event as a spectator.

I knew the guys and gals on the PST were very skilled and competent. Pond swooping may not be a mainstream event like many of the other dangerous Olympic sanctioned events. But the people competeting in it are just professional as these other athletes and they require a high degree of skill to be even considered world class. So I am kind of glad to hear that the ratio of injuries isn't any worse than some of the other dangerous sports.

I for one would like to see the PST get more TV exposure (hell I'd love to watch it when Mother Nature grounds me) and I would still like to see it in the Olympics. But I do understand some of the others concerns about not having it included.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[listo 0]

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I for one would like to see the PST get more TV exposure (hell I'd love to watch it when Mother Nature grounds me) and I would still like to see it in the Olympics. But I do understand some of the others concerns about not having it included.

I really feel that the concerns are un-founded fear of something that has no relavance over skydiving in general. It was said by someone earlier that other countries have canopy restrictions. I really believe that if the USPA tried to do something like that, they would see a drastic number of current members not renewing their memberships. The USPA is a self govering body and contrary to belief, the FAA really stays out of what we do other than instruction regulations for things like tandem. Actually, the FAA has even said that Tandem Skydiving now has a permanent waiver to do so instead of the temporary waiver that was in place for a while.

Live today as tomorrow may not come

[eames 0]

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Now your looking at having to bring the US standerds in line with the rest of the world and guess what... some countries limit canopy choices, that means the US would have to do the same.

Any regulations imposed by the IOC would only affect those people attempting to go to the Olympics i.e. the swoopers. I can't see any reason why these regulations would transcend the sport of skydiving in the US. Every Olympic event has rules and regulations, but they don't affect anyone who participates in that particular sport for recreational purposes only.

Jason

[Yoshi 0]

I think it is a good reason to get people sstarted.. dont get me wrong swooping isnt the first thing a student should be learning or trying to do, but any way to get more people into the sport I think is a good thing.. not to mention that with more people in the sport the accident rates will definately go up, but now as the experienced jumpers we need to make sure that the newbies are getting the training and attention the need and deserve so they dont go out and try to hook it on thier 5th jump.... much less thier 1st..
-yoshi

_________________________________________
this space for rent.

[billvon 3,070]

>Look at it from this angle. When people first started jumping from
>airplanes for sport all of the pilots of the world told them how crazy it
> was and how it was going to make flying have a bad name.

Who told you that? If that were true skydiving never would have happened to begin with. There were, as there are today, some who thought it was crazy and some who didn't. Like today, there are some pilots who fly jumpers and some who don't. It seems to work out OK.

>I say why limit what we are doing.

Don't limit skydiving! But, to me, limits mean limits on what we can do, not limits on how many TV sets we're on.

>Everytime I go out to a club or bar I have 50 business cards and I
> make it a point to pass every one of them out before I go home.
> Are you telling me that I am bad for the sport because I am
> passing out info to as many people as possible.

Bad? No. Annoying? I would be annoyed if I was in a bar and someone came over to me trying to sell me something, and even more annoyed if he hit up all my friends and everyone else in the bar. In fact, it would get people kicked out of some bars, and would do a lot to show that skydivers are an annoying, pushy, greedy lot. But you'd know better than I would if you're annoying people.

>Think of how much revenue having canopy skills in the Olympics would bring to our sport.

I don't care one bit how much new revenue is brought into skydiving. Skydiving for me has never been about making money. It's been about skydiving. Are you really saying that you think skydiving isn't moving fast enough? Canopies are still too big and doggy, we don't have good reserves and rigs, we don't have any new dytters? I think we're currently experiencing the opposite - skydiving is moving faster than training can keep up, and it's killing people. If you want to improve skydiving, work on teaching people how to live through the experience - don't push them to be on TV.

>lets just go ahead and abolish downhill skiing

(Sigh) why is it that every time we have a discussion about (for example) canopy training someone says something about "Oh, why don't we just make it illegal to drive, then?" or something equally extremist? No one is talking about abolishing anything; if you want to abolish things please start a new thread.

>Long live the swoopers of the world and the accomplisments they
>have set out to achieve. Which we are doing.

And are doing well despite not being on TV a lot.

>After all, competition RW, Free Flying, and accuracy all have
> regulations and restrictions that don't affect the sport as a whole.

So does swooping. Try landing downwind through a busy landing area and see if swooping is unrestricted. Fortunately, the rules are now enforced by other skydivers; I'd like to keep it that way.

[PhreeZone 20]

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Think of how much revenue having canopy skills in the Olympics would bring to our sport. Oh yeah, let me see........more revenue somehow has always lead to more R&D. If the manufacturers as well as dropzones start getting more income from something, well that just means that we will be able to skydive that much longer. I am all for it!

Name the top three bikes used in the road races in the summer games, the snowboard that won gold in the winter? Here is a really easy one... the shoes that were worn in the 110 meter hurdles.

The R&D money for these projects comes from the general market. Trek uses the money they make off of selling 100 bikes to your weekend rider to put one bike and rider in a wind tunnel. Think Nike actually sells more then a few dozen pair of the high end track shoes? That R&D money came from you and me buying our shoes at the local store. If not for all the kids running out to pick up a Burton board after Salt Lake there is no way that Burton would have the R&d money that they would have today.

The revenue generated would be in the student market with everyone running out to try skydiving and none would be going back to the manufactors.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[listo 0]

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Who told you that? If that were true skydiving never would have happened to begin with.

An old skydiver that was part of the first RW jumps in Texas.

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>Everytime I go out to a club or bar I have 50 business cards and I
> make it a point to pass every one of them out before I go home.
> Are you telling me that I am bad for the sport because I am
> passing out info to as many people as possible.

Bad? No. Annoying?

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I don't annoy anyone. I just go to places where I know that people know me and what I do. Everyday conversation seems to get people interested in what I do and they ask for info and that is when I give them a card or a few for their friends as well. My cards are worth a discount on a jump so people really like getting them........annoyed?, I don't think so.

I don't care one bit how much new revenue is brought into skydiving. Skydiving for me has never been about making money. It's been about skydiving

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I am not speaking for personal gain here. I am talking about helping dropzones become larger and fly better airplanes and buy newer student gear that might be more safe than the old stuff being used at some dz's right now.

skydiving is moving faster than training can keep up, and it's killing people. If you want to improve skydiving, work on teaching people how to live through the experience - don't push them to be on TV.

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Nobody is pushing anyone to be on TV in any way what so ever. If an individual wants to improve their personal talent level to a certain point, then so be it. If that individual is going to be a moron and try to do it all in one weekend and not go on the advice of the people who actually know about it and then he kills himself while doing it, then I am not going to feel sorry for him one bit. There is an order of progression and safe ways of doing things. If that leads to the World Games or Olympics for a person then I am going to be the first to congratulate them.

Competition swooping is no different from competition RW in the fact that regulations for competition don't affect regular skydiving ops. If a goof ball goes out and does a downwinder into the middle of a crowd of normal jumpers landing into the wind......well that indidvidual needs to be grounded for the weekend to think about it, if it was done intentionally.

Keeping any form of our sport from growing in any way is communism in my opinion.

Live today as tomorrow may not come

[billvon 3,070]

>I am not speaking for personal gain here. I am talking about
> helping dropzones become larger and fly better airplanes and buy
> newer student gear that might be more safe than the old stuff being
> used at some dz's right now.

Larger DZ's - I don't see the need; we have both large and small DZ's now, and people have a choice as where they would like to jump. Many people prefer large DZ's, many others prefer small ones. It seems to work.

New student gear - again, I don't see the need. We have some 8 year old Telesis rigs that are as 'modern' (i.e. BOC throwouts) as any on the market. I agree that we need to make sure that our student gear is safe and well maintained. But keep in mind that fewer students means you can retire some of your older rigs, and there is less wear on the rigs you have. It works both ways. Increasing numbers is one way to get good student gear, but it is far from the only way.

>Nobody is pushing anyone to be on TV in any way what so ever.

Hmm. I thought you were pushing for skydivers to be in the olympics, the most televised sports event on the planet.

>If that individual is going to be a moron and try to do it all in one
> weekend and not go on the advice of the people who actually know
> about it and then he kills himself while doing it, then I am not going
> to feel sorry for him one bit.

I have friends who that has happened to. And while I don't think their injuries or deaths were unfair, it's hard to look at a friend of yours lying there in a coma and not feel sympathy for her, to not wish that she hadn't made that mistake. It even makes me want to educate others so that it doesn't happen to them, too. That's not to say that making the sport more popular will help or hurt this, but I would strongly suggest that it's a good idea to solve the problem of under-canopy fatalities before we expose ten times the number of people to those risks.

>Keeping any form of our sport from growing in any way is communism in my opinion.

I thought it was terrorism! Communism is the old scary word; all the cool kids use terrorism now.

Seriously, I don't think that skydiving in the olympics would be the end of the world, nor do I think the sport shouldn't grow. It will grow no matter what we do. But putting a lot of effort into publicizing it, whether through having it in the olympics, having TV shows about it etc may be counterproductive. We have a lot of work to do in this sport just keeping people alive; I hope we spend most of our energy in that direction before we try to make the sport bigger. If we do spend our energies teaching instead of selling, then the sport will grow, but the number of fatalities won't - and that's a noble goal.

[Designer 0]

Very good news!

[hookitt 1]

How'd I miss this thread? How cool is this!

Damn TJ!!! come back and show some SHIT!

-
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My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[listo 0]

well I believe that the common ground is to allow the sport to grow into what ever it can grow into then. I agree that training and safety need to go hand in hand. I don't want to see anyone get hurt needlessly, but at the same time, I don't want to hold the sport back because someone might make a bad decision one day and hurt themself.

When the day comes that we hold ourself back from competitions on TV or high publicity competitions in general because some moron out there would discover our sport and join it only to kill themself, then I say we are doing ourself an injustice.

From the first time anyone comes to the DZ to learn to skydive they are taugh the seriousness and dangers of what we do. Especially where swooping is concerned. More often than not, I see whuffos see a swoop for the first time and they think they are about to see someone go "splat" because that swooper is diving like a bat out of hell towards the ground.

We can't select who is going to learn to skydive, just like we can't select who is going to learn to swoop and try high risk activities in skydiving. I honestly believe that having swooping in the world games would be great for the sport because it would show the general public that modern parachutes can be flown with really high precision, accuracy and safety.

Now, if the swoop competitions involved someone dieing every other jump, then yes I would agree with you, that would be bad for the sport. However, for the most part, swooping doesn't have that happening. Sure, accidents are going to happen from time to time, but wouldn't it be justice for the sport of swooping to be able to show the general public how many safe jumps there are compared to how few injuries or deaths there are in comparison.

Quite honestly, I really believe that having a huge spectative audience would make the swoopers fly a little safer. We don't want to give our sport of skydiving a bad reputation. It is already bad enough. We just want to compete and have fun. If there is a chance for us to take what we do to the Olympics and World Games, then great.

Would it make you feel better if competition swoopers decided to name our sport something different and try to tell people that it is something completely un-associated with skydiving? After all, we aren't really skydiving. We are just hopping from a high platform into a fluid in which we deploy an inflatable wing so that we can come down and scream across the ground. I don't mean that with sarcasm, I am being serious here. Would that make you feel better? A lot of swoopers do only swooping. Personally, there are days where I do nothing but Hop-n-Hooks.

Live today as tomorrow may not come

[billvon 3,070]

>From the first time anyone comes to the DZ to learn to skydive they
> are taugh the seriousness and dangers of what we do. Especially
> where swooping is concerned.

I've noticed the opposite. "Sure, get that Sabre 135; you'll be fine under it. Just be really careful the first few jumps." Twelve years ago, any jumper who suggested that to a newbie would have been banned from the DZ for trying to kill someone. And while times have changed, the laws of aerodynamics and physics have not. Those canopies are just as deadly, we just don't see them that way any more. We are less, rather than more, serious about the dangers they pose.

>Quite honestly, I really believe that having a huge spectative
>audience would make the swoopers fly a little safer.

Again, it's been my experience that the exact opposite is true. I've seen "demo fever" all too often - someone is jumping in front of a big crowd for the first time and they take risks they never would otherwise, and do spectacularly stupid things. You get used to it after a while, but jumpers new to demos have this problem a lot.

>We just want to compete and have fun. If there is a chance for us to
>take what we do to the Olympics and World Games, then great.

Competing - great, it advances the sport. Have all the competitions you want. I just see no advantage to having a swoop meet be watched by 500 skydivers vs. being watched by 500 skydivers and ten million whuffos. If they _want_ to watch, by all means, let them. But why do we need to try to spend time and effort to get them to watch? Like I've been saying, that effort is better spent towards keeping skydivers alive.

>Would it make you feel better if competition swoopers decided to
> name our sport something different and try to tell people that it is
> something completely un-associated with skydiving?

Uh, no, no more than I would think a Crossfire 89 becomes safer if you call it a CushyLander 2.0. It's not the name that matters in this case, it's the activity. And jumping out of planes and landing under ram-airs is the activity.

[listo 0]

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I've noticed the opposite. "Sure, get that Sabre 135; you'll be fine under it. Just be really careful the first few jumps." Twelve years ago, any jumper who suggested that to a newbie would have been banned from the DZ for trying to kill someone. And while times have changed, the laws of aerodynamics and physics have not.

Well, on this I have to agree completely. There is some really bad advice being given to unknowing souls this day in time. I see your point on this one.

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a Crossfire 89 becomes safer if you call it a CushyLander 2.0.

I would have said a CushyOpener 2.0 instead

Sorry for the sarcasm in that post as well with this one. Don't you just love how you can pick someone's phrase apart to make it sound like something else sometimes. I hate it when people do this to me. I know what you mean though, and yes, once again, you are correct in what you are saying.

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You get used to it after a while, but jumpers new to demos have this problem a lot.

This would be a good thing in my opinion. After all, people who are going to be selected for the Olympics are going to have to represent our country. We aren't going to select someone that is immature and a terrible representation of our country and what we do. More over, that person that is selected is going to be someone that is one hell of a pilot or pilots that could compete in a strong and mature manner. Personally, I think that it would be a better way to make role models. The PST is great and the top dogs have fun, but when it comes to talking about canopies and the way they fly them......well they always demonstrate utmost precision and maturity. On camera, they are goofballs, but in the air, they are mature.

Honestly, I think a lot of the attitude comes from watching the "big boys" on cameral being cool and the people who see this try to reciprocate that attitude in their flying and get hurt. The "big boys" will be the first to tell you that immaturity in the air causes people to get hurt or killed.

I really think that someone should have to pass a maturity test before being allowed to swoop. I mean, be cool and goofy all ya want on the ground, but keep it real in the air.

Live today as tomorrow may not come