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FREEFLY FESTIVAL 1998: "Arizona Dream"
The third Free Fly Festival took place in Eloy (Arizona, USA) from November 23rd to November 29th. Since its creation three years ago, the number of participants (including French people) has kept increasing.
By "Seb" 
The idea of gathering the current best freeflyers was born in 1996, giving free rein to their imagination and to that of the king, Olav Zipser. From the beginning of the 90s, he had accumulated thousands of jumps to explore the never-ending trails of freefall. His goal was simple: to show the rest of the world what was possible when mastering the techniques of freefly.
Charles Bryan, who was then a member of the mythical Free Fly Clowns team (see ParaMag n°107, April 96), set up the event. He found the money needed for a team composed of ten sylphs to make a hundred jumps together in one week. He called upon the services of the dropzone in Eloy and this was where what was to be a historical moment of the modern skydiving took place: the first Free Fly Festival. That was November 1996 (see ParaMag n° 115, December 96).
And it was a brilliant display, the harmony in the ten-skydiver group turned to perfect osmosis as can be forever seen in the "Chronicle II" video. This video has become to freefly what Carl Boenishís movies are to BASE jump.
Most of the moves that were made at that time, carvings, spins, pylon race, transitions, exits and so on, are still on the scene. It shows how these skydivers were ahead of their time.
The Free Fly Festival has perpetuated, becoming a kind of boogie open to every freeflyer. The required level is quite high though and those who wish to be part of big ways or of technically difficult jumps, have to show they are at their place and worth their partnerís trust, just as in RW.
This year, about 170 freeflyers came from Japan, Australia, Europe, North and South America to be together in Arizona from November 23rd to November 29th.
On this occasion, about ten "load organisers" had been invited. Their mission was to get as much fun as the people in their groups. Actually, everyone was free to jump with one group or another and could find the same friendly atmosphere. The participants could jump with great names of Rock & Roll freefall: the FlyBoyz, the gifted Mike Vail, Charles Bryan, John Alaska or Omar Alhegelan, the master of upright freefly...
However, from the beginning of the week, one group gave a special pitch to the event: the many French skydivers who came this year. This group was organised around the Parachutes de France Team (Stéphane Fardel, Sylvain Turina, Nicolas Arnaud, Pierre Maarek, Patrick Bernard, Arnaud Fletcher and FX Kesler), but some Australians, Americans and other Europeans were spontaneously welcomed so that its size was always between 8 and 23. It can be pointed out that many other French jumpers could have joined them.
Recreating the core of those who had met during previous boogies in Vichy (France), the French have made high quality jumps and their videos were always watched with great attention in the packing room where a large screen stood.
Nevertheless, during this 98 Festival, Stéphane Fardel and Sylvain Turina stood out among the French. Free of any hindrance, the two Babylon fellows could express creativity and talent, making their tubes and their "bomb" fly!!! It had never been seen, even in Eloy, the place where TVs, cars or bikes fall from the sky.
It was such a success that Sylvain and Stéphane had to increase the size of the groups in order to satisfy the ever more insisting appeals from skydivers who did not want to miss the opportunity to be part of these extraordinary jumps...
With every call from the manifest for a "bomb load" or a "tube jump", excitement and curiosity were tangible and everyone would feverishly inspect his camera in order to be certain to catch some freefall and some light.
As the excellent Swiss freeflyer Tazio Madlinger pointed out in an article in Slider magazine, the history of freefly is intimately bound to the use of video. From this point of view, bomb and tubes jumps have consecrated a really beautiful wedding.
Imagine the sight of the dropping, at 4 500 metres, of a 80-pound barrel topped with some sort of a wind-sock, multicoloured and 5 metres high, falling at a good 280 kph in the red sky of Arizona, followed by 23 skydivers who gather quickly around the machine in an almost perfect round.
In the corner, one could see Omar in his characteristic standing-up position, playing with his shadow on the bomb's tube while Mike Vail let go of his grip to take hold of the machine with both hands before diving away from the formation, thus signalling the end of the jump: mystic!
There were also some very beautiful "no contact" jumps with more than 20 people perfectly flying around two or three tubes, but the most beautiful, the most dynamic of the tube jumps was unquestionably the 10-way with two tubes 5 metres apart, around which the freeflyers carved in a furious 8... The crossings were very hot!
Being fortunate enough to take part in these jumps, I could see how extraordinary, how intense skydiving can be, a conviction born out of those looks, those handshakes back on the ground when all the participants would meet in a brotherly rite, their hands still shaking from the adrenaline rush given by the never ending swoops allowed by the dry and motionless air of the Arizona desert.
There were many other types of jumps, such as, for instance, some standing-up "big ways" attempts, formation tracking jumps or 10-way "high-speed" jumps which lasted no more than 30 seconds. A tracking race was also organised every night from the DC-3.
So much variety in the jumps made possible for the participants to understand that freefall is a science as much as an art and that much more than a life is needed in order to know all of its secrets, shared out between every discipline.
In fact, the more mature freefly gets, the more freeflyers note that there is no discipline of skydiving which cannot bring them something and vice versa. The freestyle world cup winner Nicolas Arnaud, for instance, is convinced of this, he who has well understood the very essence he could get from the "Free Fly Style". He is already among the great names of freefly.
In a similar way, the observation of RW can be very fruitful for freefly since it seems possible to transpose the rules of flight. Besides a RW specialist would have been welcomed to brief the 23-way exits from the Twin Otter which were too imperfect to achieve a 43-way jump made without much success at the end of the week.
In the end, the 98 Festival was a good promise for the years to come. Thanks to the schools now established about everywhere, the average skill level is booming up. From one festival to the other, from one boogie to another, jumps are getting more and more interesting, big ways are getting bigger. Some freeflyers with only 400 jumps, but who were wise enough to invest in some school jumps in order to acquire good basics, are able to fly in big ways, know how to take grips smoothly and respect the appropriate break-off procedures for the discipline.
I cannot wait for next year. Charles Bryan's Festival should take place in September at his home dropzone near Lake Tahoe in California, a dropzone entirely dedicated to freefly and recently created with his inseparable friend Mike Vail. Since then, there is no doubt that we will again have the opportunity to share magnificent times with European boogies, come and join us!
 

Warning: the English translations in this text may not all be correct. Thanks for your comprehension and please address any comment to me Jean-Francois RIPOCHE.
 

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