2nd Parachuting Formation Skydiving Tournament CISM

WINTERTHUR / TRIENGEN (SUI)  - For the second time since 2017, the international parachute competition Indoor / Outdoor took place in Switzerland from July 1 to 6, 2019 in Winterthur and Triengen, Switzerland. The athletes competed in the discipline of 4-way Formation Skydive. First, the program was completed in the new wind tunnel in Winterthur. On the following 3 days, the same draw was flown in free fall over Triengen.

17 teams from 11 nations met at Windwerk Winterthur (www.windwerk.ch) early Tuesday morning and prepared for the 8 competition flights. The first round was started at 9am. Indoor skydiving is flown in a vertical tube, in which the air is blown from bottom to top at a speed of 200km/h. The flights are recorded by a camera and then evaluated on the basis of this video by the judges. In the competition, the athletes have 35 seconds to complete the drawn program as often as possible. In order to fly as many points (formations) as possible precision, speed and team rhythm are needed.

At noon four rounds had already been completed and the team from Qatar led the ranking, followed by Germany and Spain. For the 4th place Switzerland fought against the Czechs. After the final 8 rounds Qatar could celebrate the victory with 293 points. Germany took second place with 269 ahead of Spain with 260 points. The team from the Czech Republic was able to hold its own against the Swiss in the final ranking in fourth place. The Swiss team CISM-Motion showed a clear improvement over the same competition of 2017 (9th place).

The following day, all participants met at the Triengen airport to start the second part of the competition. The teams were flown with Pilatus Portern PC-6 to a jump height of 3300m above ground, from where they started the freefall and completed the same program as in the wind tunnel.

The OK team on the ground (mainly from the team CISM Airheads) had done an excellent job. One dilemma was the closing of the TMA from Sky guide over Triengen for the last two days. As a solution, a landing zone in Emmen was set up, so that the teams could jump over Emmen and were subsequently shuttled back to Triengen by bus. Of course, this resulted in a time delay and as such only 7 instead of the 8 rounds in freefall could be completed.

The competition remained exciting until the end and there were some hard fights in the rankings. In the end the Qatari prevailed again before the Germans and the Spaniards. Fourth place was occupied by the Czech Republic and the Swiss (pictured below) were able to displace the Russians back to 6th and placed fifth behind the Czechs like in the wind tunnel.

«The concept of indoor/ outdoor formation skydiving 4way competition is a CISM specialty, it was now organized by Switzerland for the 2nd time and the international participation of CISM teams from 3 continents proves the success», declared Colonel Gernot Rittenschober, PCSC Parachuting.

Thanks to all the helpers and the logistics for making this event again a great success. Thanks also to the two Swiss teams Airheads (Alain Siegrist, Roman Kühne, Marco Keller, Stelio Jotti) and CISM Motion (Daniel Fergg, Aaron Marbach, Stef Lehner, Yann Bourquin) for their great commitment to this event.

(Source: Jörg Baumann, leader of Swiss CISM Parachuting)