1st FAI World Cup in Wingsuit Acrobatic Flying, Z'Hills - Day 4

Thursday, 10th November 2016

PRINTABLE PDF RESULTS

Today is departure day, it is quiet on the drop zone at Skydive City, Z'Hills but the sun is shining and we have blue skies, unlike yesterday for the final awards and closing ceremony.  This did not cloud the atmosphere though.  We had a very constructive Competitors' meeting where it was very clear to the committee that Wingsuiters did not want to see a totally combined Wingsuit Championships, i.e. morning Performance, afternoon Acrobatic.  However they would like to see a combined competition with Acrobatic first followed by Performance; the committee said they would take note of this strong message and it would be discussed at the forthcoming IPC Plenary meeting.  The Chair of the Committee, John Smyth, advised everyone present to take their message to their IPC Delegates so they also understood what their wishes were.

The meeting was followed by the Medal presentation and closing ceremony and it was an opportunity to thank everyone who had worked so hard to make these first FCE's both World Championships in Performance Flying and World Cup in Acrobatic Flying a success.  Wingsuiting had definately arrived with a very positive future.  There were no injuries during either competition and after the first day (5) only a couple more cutaways.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR MEDAL WINNERS

GOLD - USA 1   Jeffrey Harrigan  Mark Krasiski  Sarah Chamberlain
Silver - USA2   Anthony Zerbonia  Travis Mickle  Simon Repton
Bronze - Russia    Igor Volkov Sergei Kistaichev Andrey Iurosh

There were a lot of people to thank and I only have a few photographs to put here, but everyone who worked at Skydive City, from the manifesters, bar and catering staff, to the cleaners who gave us a pleasant working environment, loadmasters, pilots to TK himself - a huge vote of thanks.  To the scoring system providers, Klaus Rheinwald of Paralog for the Performance Flying and Michael Cooper with his Flysights and operation of the OmniSkore!HD system for Acrobatic Flying.  To our FAI officials, FAI Controller (and Chair of the Wingsuit Committee) John Smyth and Meet Director, Randy Connell (who as IPC Records Officer, made sure that the records set at this FCE were processed correctly and quickly).

John Smyth	Randy Connell

Not to forget our Jury, Bernard Nicolas (President), Dr. Rainer (Exi) Hoenle (IPC President) and Sarka Blaskova and our Judges who took the opportunity of the ceremony to publically thank Mary Farwell-Uragallo for her work as assistant to the Chief Judge and the Judging Panel.  Kate Charters, Chief Judge, David McMinn, Event Judge, Buzz Bennett, Michael Cooper, Tamara Koyn, Yves Letourner, Jami Pilasch, Klaus Rheinwald and Sheena Simmonds and Training Judge Ulla Maersk.

Jury	Judges
Kate Charters with Mary Farwell-Uragallo	'Exi' Closes the Competition with a Joke!

The one person we owe most thanks to, without whom none of this would have been possible, is David TK Hayes, owner of Skydive City, Zephyrhills, USA and Organiser.  We sincerely hope that after the dust has settled and we all look back with pride on what was achieved here these past 9 days and will invite the IPC back to another First Category Event in the future.  Thank you from the Skydiving community.

David T K Hayes

Sincere thanks also go to our Media Partner, Skydive-tv for their excellent coverage of this event, given the difficulty of covering a discipline that does not have video evidence of the jump to broadcast (Performance), for producing interesting and informative episodes.   Take a look at the latest here:

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Finally, thanks to all the web-sites that have promoted this event for us :  Skydive City DZ,  Paralog, OmniSkore!HD and Skydive-TV and of course our own IPC Facebook page.

The next report will be from Faro, Portugal, January 25 - 29 for the total IPC Meeting including the Open Meeting days before the acutal Plenary 28 and 29 January 2017.