Race to earth: How fast can you skydive? - Economic Times

Kyle Lobpries jumps out of the airplane — backward. As he watches it fly away, he leans back and shifts his gaze toward the inverted horizon, the sky bowing before the earth. He continues to drift until he feels he is perfectly perpendicular to the planet. Then he locks his knees, points his toes, clenches his buttocks, tucks his arms into his sides, shrugs his shoulders and hurls himself toward land as fast as humanly possible.

This technique, developed by jumping out of a plane 5-10 times a day for the better part of several years, is just part of the explanation for how Lobpries has propelled himself to the peak of the sport of speed skydiving. First developed in Florida in 1999, speed skydiving began gaining recognition as an international discipline in the early 2000s. The sport pits extreme thrill seekers against each other — and the laws of physics.

In October, at the United States Parachute Association Nationals in Arizona, Lobpries became the fastest athlete in the sport when he reached a speed of 318.74 mph. That exceeded his previous world record of 316.23 mph. Maxine Tate, a fellow American competitor, also broke her own women’s world record, increasing her speed from 275.8 to 285.27 mph. Those records blow by the top speeds of NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula 1 drivers, who have never surpassed 260 mph in official competitions.

It is a sport for people who have flung themselves out of planes with such frequency that the simple act of strapping on a parachute and staring at a 13,000-foot drop no longer offers an adequate adrenaline rush. “It’s not like we have jet boosters on,” Lobpries said. “In theory, there’s a maximum speed that I could attain. I could literally graph it out with an equation. But if my shoelace comes untied, or if my angle is just 1 degree off, or if I’m fatigued, I won’t get anywhere close to that top speed. There’s a human element to all of this, and that’s what makes the competition so exciting.”

Speed skydiving poses quite a few challenges that make the competition compelling. For one, technology has not caught up to the sport. Tate and Lobpries wear tight nylon suits to reduce wind drag and tape down their zippers and shoelaces so they do not turn into tiny tormentors. (“I once had a loose zipper that ripped out a patch of chest hair and left me raw and bruised,” Lobpries said.) Lobpries, who normally wears a large helmet, squeezes his head into a small one during competitions to reduce drag. Competitors also aim to maintain rigid body control and focus to reduce drag.

Even a slight crane of the neck can lead to what they call “the wobbles,” where the body starts shaking and air resistance can significantly reduce speed. To measure their speed, the skydivers wear two GPS monitors called FlySights, which are duct taped to them by judges before the competition. They jump from between 13,000 and 14,000 feet and are monitored continuously during a 7,400-foot window that ends at 5,600 feet above the ground.

The fastest three-second average during that window is recorded as the divers’ speed, and the one with the highest speed average after eight jumps wins. The most problematic part of the jump is often during deceleration, when the margin for error is slim. When they have crossed the lower boundary, Flysights sends a signal to the divers’ earpieces. If Lobpries stayed in position and maintained his free-fall speed of 463 feet per second past the 5,600-foot mark, he would smash into the earth in about 12 seconds. The other major risk in the entire endeavor is premature parachute deployment. “We’re taking this equipment to speeds where it hasn’t been tested,” Lobpries said.

To slow down, divers attempt to curve their bodies back to a horizontal position in about five seconds. But sometimes, a shift in wind or an errant movement can cause them to “cork,” their bodies snapping 90 degrees in an instant. It can feel like being in a car accident. But Tate and Lobpries and others are willing to endure the pain and accept the risks. To them, it is part of being a pioneer in a sport when it is still pure. “We’re at the point where we’re almost defying physics,” Lobpries said. “What will we do next?”

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Race to earth: How fast can you skydive? - Economic Times
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