Skysurfing World Championships

Festival Location: Worldwide

Festival Type(s): Extreme Sports Events, Bizarre Sports Events, Air Shows

Skysurfing World Championships Media:

Skysurfing

By: © Michael J. Rosen 2010

"Not Even NASA Astronauts Get to Play in Four Dimensions"

- the official freefallers at the Dropzone Web site

About thirty years ago, thanks to the country that brought the sporting universe croquet, pool, petanque, pari-mutuel track betting, automobile racing, Greco-Roman wrestling (yes, the French named the sport in honor of those buff boys painted on those urns), and one long-ass bike race, some skydivers began skysurfing, in which jumpers stand on a board and perform a series of spins, somersaults, and other tricks during a plummet to Earth.

A Reebok commercial featuring French skysurfers brought the sport to America in 1991. It was demonstrated at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. The X-Games featured skysurfing from 1995-2000. All this broadened skysurfing's appeal, if "broad" can refer to the dubious minions of folks clamoring to exit an airplane on a surfboard.

Today, the International Parachuting Commission hosts the Skysurfing World Championships, which awards points based on video camera footage. According to the skydiving info center, www.dropzone.com, in this two-person team sport "the cameraflyer* records the performance [of the skysurfer] with a helmet-mounted camcorder but also contributes to the performance interactively-and the team's overall score-through his or her own creative and athletic skills."* (Back on earth, most cameraflyers support their team by doing video-conferencing for monthly meetings of hospital staffs.)

Skysurfing lives in tetraspace. (Steady now...you can wrap you head around this bit of physics.) If Hugh Grant is one-dimensional; Ms. Pac Man, two-dimensional; and friends (in person, not on Facebook), three-dimensional; then four is the magic number for skysurfing. Out in tetraspace, skysurfing uniquely provides athletes the power to maneuver move up/down, left/right, and forward/backward, and to control their relative speed, which counts as a fourth dimension if you enjoy science, science fiction, or psychotropic mushrooms.

Longed for the chance to shout "Gnarly!" from 10,000 feet? See www.skysurfer.com.

*Imagine if other athletes had personal videographers: There'd be paparazzi stealing signs in every baseball dugout, no use for line judges at tennis matches, and technologically sanctioned "peeking" at other players' hands during the World Series of Poker.

No Dribbling the Squid

The above article is just one of a collection of off-beat articles on 2camels from Michael J. Rosen's wonderful No Dribbling the Squid - your front-row seat to 70 of the world's most mind-blowing feats of strength, endurance, and eccentricity.

For more info check out the No Dribbling the Squid website, Facebook fan page or Michael's very own website.

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