How
old are you and how long have you been in the sport?
I am 29
and will have been jumping for five years this July.
How
many jumps do you have and how current are you?
I have
2,100 jumps in total, 400 in the last year.
Where
were you born and where do you live now?
I was
born in Melbourne, Australia and now live in London.
Do
you have a sporting background?
I
started gymnastics when I was about thirteen. A few of my mates
were doing it, gymnastics was the thing to do at lunchtime. They
were going crazy and it looked like fun and I thought I would join
in. I competed at state level. I loved it. Then I got into
coaching as I didn't want to give it all up when I left school. I
coached for about five years for ages four and five to 17 years
old. Coaching was unreal. The smile on their faces was just
incredible. It also meant I got free access to the gym and I could
do a lot of trampolining.
So,
why did you do your first skydive?
It was
something I have wanted to do since I was a little kid. I was
playing in a band at a hotel and got talking with an old friend
who said he had 70 skydives and I should try it. I thought I would
do just the one but I was totally hooked!
What
did you do next?
When I
had 40 jumps I was sick of trying to find someone to jump with! So
when I got my first rig I thought I would try something new and
try to go from the top (altitude) to the bottom (ground) as
quickly as possible. I hadn't seen any freefly or anything at this
point and another guy asked if he could come along and we started
trying head-down. When I had 180 jumps I was playing at a jazz
festival on the coast of LA and decided to go from there to Perris
to see the Fly Boyz and did some jumps with them. That was just
fantastic. I worked out that all the stuff I had learned until
then was relative. I got the biggest buzz out of that.
I went back to
Australia and Omar (Alhegelan) came out to Sydney, Australia. I
had seen him on video and decided to go up there, hoping I might
have the chance to jump with him. I did about seven jumps with
him, 2-ways and 4 and 5-ways. We were turning six points with the
2-ways, that was taking it to another level again. I caught up
with Omar, in Arizona, many times since and each time I saw him he
could not have made me feel more at home. I saw a lot of his
freestyle stuff and that was amazing. I learned a lot from
watching him. Hence I got inspired to look at freestyle and in New
Zealand jumped with Jon King (cameraman) and we went to the
Arizona Freefly Festival. Omar saw my video and he said if I did
some work, I had the potential to win a medal at a world
competition. That was so motivating!
What
happened after that inspiration from Omar?
We went
to the Australian Nationals and won them – that was a bit of a
surprise! In Queensland, during 1999, I did a training camp with
Jon and another one just before the World Championships in
Australia. We did eight or nine weeks training that year. We went
out there and won.
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