Is Skydiving a Sport?

It is often assumed that when you skydive you just fall from the sky and it takes no skill what-so-ever. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are two different ways to skydive, casually (for fun) or competitively. Skydiving for fun is exactly that; you jump with other people to have fun, there are no rules, no expectations, and you just have a good time jumping and learning. It’s almost always assumed that skydiving is easy and takes no skill. I mean, you’re just jumping out of a plane, right? Well actually, it takes a lot of time, training, and money to skydive competitively. Flying your body isn’t something that comes naturally nor is it something that is easy to do well.

Types of Competitive Skydiving:

• Canopy Formation
• Formation Skydiving
• Freefall Style and Landing Accuracy
• Artistic Events

Canopy Formation (below) takes place under open canopies, not in freefall. Immediately after exit, jumpers deploy their parachute and then proceed to fly to one another and link together, making different formations in the air. Numbers vary from just a few, to the world record of 85. They link together using their feet and legs, hanging onto other parachute lines, putting their feet on another parachute, or connecting to another jumpers body.


Formation Skydiving (below) is when a “team” of jumpers (4, 8, 10, etc) form a pre-planned formation or sequence of formations and maneuvers.


Freefall Style and Landing Accuracy (below) is pretty self explanatory. In Freefall Style, jumpers perform a prescribed sequence of maneuvers as quickly and correctly as possible. During Landing Accuracy, teams or individuals attempt to land on, or as near to, the center of a target as they can.


Skysurfing (below-left), Freestyle, and Freeflying (below-right) are what make up the Artistic Events category. Freestyle and Skysurfing teams perform a sequence of moves for creative and compulsory points during freefall. Skysurfing utilizes a board (snowboard-like) to do moves such as flips and spins. Freestyle is more ballet-like, using fluid like movements. Freeflying is precisely that, free. Freeflyers do a wide variety of positions including head-down, standing up, a sitting position, as well as pretty much anything else in between.


Every year, the USPA holds the National Skydiving Championships to recognize champions in each of the four competitive skydiving disciplines. Skydiving competition dates back well to the 30’s in Russia.