Freeflying

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Free flying is a skydiving discipline that began in the late 1980s, involving falling free in various vertical orientations, as opposed to the traditional "belly-to-earth" orientation. The discipline is known to have originated when Olav Zipser began experimenting with non-traditional forms of Body flight. Zipser founded the Free Fly Clowns as a two-person competitive team with Mike Vail in 1992. He was joined by Omar Alhegelan (1st ever FAI Freestyle World Cup & World Champion), Charles Bryan, and Stefania Martinengo in 1994. The Free Fly Clowns are also credited with opening the first school to teach free flying, The First School of Modern Skydiving.

Free flying entered public awareness in 1996 when the SSI Pro Tour added free flying as a three-person competitive discipline at the second televised event (with Skysurfing), part of ESPN's Destination Extreme series. One-hundred and fifty countries watched the Free Fly Clowns (Olav Zipser, Charles Bryan and Omar Alhegelan) as they took 1st place in all four international competitions along with other teams including: the Fly boys (Eli Thompson, Mike Ortiz, Knut Krecker, Fritz Pfnür), Team AirTime (Tony Urugallo, Jim O'Reilly, Peter Raymond, Brian Germain), and many other pioneers of free flying.

From 1996 to 1997, the SSI Pro Tour staged eight televised events in both North America and Europe, with $36,000 in cash prizes awarded to free-fly teams. SSI invited the 1997 Pro World Champions, the Flyboyz, to participate in the 1998 ESPN X Games as an unofficial exhibition.^[1] The resulting global television exposure attracted considerable attention to the FreeFly Clowns, the Flyboyz, and Freeflying as a discipline. A once fledgling offshoot of the mainstream, freeflying now comprises one-half of the overall skydiving community.^[2]

Zipser's Space Games used a "space ball" as a research and measuring device to provide a constant speed and direction from which individual athletes could be trained, judged, and allow individuals to race each other. In 1998, the Space Games accelerated in popularity and brought publicity to the sport Free Flying.^[3]

In 2000, Free Fly was accepted as an aviation discipline by the International Parachute Commission (IPC) and the first official Free Fly National Championships were held worldwide.^[4]