Parachute Club Banja Luka hosted the European Parachuting Championships and World Cup from which from today until 19th August will be held at the sports airfield “Zalužani”.
This sport event has gathered about 280 parachutists from the top 20 countries in the world (U.S, UK, Ukraine, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland, Norway, Lithuania, Israel, Italy, Denmark, Austria, France, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Netherlands , Venezuela, Sweden, Hungary).
At the Sports Airfield in Zalužani near Banja Luka today is held the official training and competition will officially start on 14th August.
Parachutists will compete in the disciplines: relative group jumps (“Formation Skydiving” – male and female competition) and artistic disciplines (“Freefly and Freestyle”).
“Formation Skydiving (FS)” is the type of discipline where four and eight people in free fall perform a series of defined characters, as many times in a specific time period of 35 seconds. In addition, FS is used to create large formations in free fall.
The current world record for the group jumps is from 303 parachutists.
The first world championship in the same discipline was held in 1975 and is now proposed for the inclusion in the Olympic disciplines.
Each team has its own cameraman who records the entire jump and on the basis of his shots is done the scoring.
In “FreeFly” participants show individuality in a free fall and they perform a series of “radical” maneuvers. This discipline is the hardest to learn.
“Freeflying” jumpers are a team of two participants, parachutists and one of them is the cameraman. During the free fall they show choreography composed of different sequences.
“Freeflying” usually fells 50 percent faster than “ordinary” parachutists (250-290 km / h), but sometimes they reach a peak speeds over 300 km / h, which makes “freeflying” the fastest non motorized sport in the world.
“Freestyle” contestants perform a series of solo aerial maneuvers like gymnastics, which can be very fast and complicated.
Although there are many positions and maneuvers in “freestyle” everything is allowed and more innovative the better.
This competition is supported by the City of Banja Luka, the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sports of the Republic of Srpska, the Ministry of Defense of B&H and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of B&H.
