Precision and adrenalin for a world record

This morning, they woke up with the conviction that this day would remain engraved in their memories forever. The Californian sky over Perris Valley is a deep blue, and the wind has decided to stay in the locker room. Conditions are ideal for flying the nine planes, each of which will carry 23 people to an altitude of 5500m, before the big jump for a new world record. For four days now, the 202 parachutists invited by Diter Kirsch, Milko Hodgkinson and Patrick Passe, the organizers of Sequential Games, have been tirelessly rehearsing every gesture, visualizing every second, simulating the performance.

On the ground and in the air, with four to five flights a day, the record attempt is on everyone’s mind. Concentration is the order of the day. Rigor and organization too. These ingredients are essential to the success of such a project. Like a watchmaker at his workbench, for each of the participants, it’s a question of extreme precision and mastery of time and space. Achieving such a record leaves nothing to chance.

Tensions are running high, but everyone knows their role to the letter, the tempo to be followed, the exact trajectory they’ll have to take to complete the two compulsory figures within the allotted time. 70 seconds, not a second more: that’s exactly how long it will take from the jump at 5500 meters altitude to the separation of the second figure, at 2000 meters altitude.

First figure produced

Launched at 200 km/h, the participants fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in motion. The challenge was met: the mythical 200-person mark for a sequence in large relative flight formation was surpassed! What’s next? Three figures? We’re thinking about it,” confides Patrick Passe, one of the three organizers. But that means we’ll have to go even faster and be even more precise. It’s all about time and precision, and adrenalin to boot.

Second figure produced

Five figures for a record

202 The number of people of 23 nationalities who took part in the record-breaking event
6 The number of Swiss who took part in the record. Among them, Julien Meylan
70 The free-fall time is extremely fast: only 70 seconds to complete the two figures.
5500 The freefall jump starts at an altitude of 5500m
200 Free-fall descent at 200 km/h