In case you missed it last September, this feels like an apropos time to reshare the Skydive The Mag cover Nik shot: Brianne (of course), flying past a dewy dandelion at SDAZ.
Also check out some of AXIS’s other contributions to that September 2025 issue of the magazine:
Page 8 – ‘Speeding Towards the Future’
Page 28 – ‘Belly flying still matters, and here’s why’ (images are mine)
And in the latest Mag: Principles of Fitness for Flying (page 8).
Enjoy!
Over the weekend of April 25-26, AXIS Flight School hosted the second 2026 ISSA Event of the year at Skydive Arizona.
Competitors from three countries attended—the USA, Australia, and China. There are eight ISSA Events in total this year, and this meet brought together several world-level veterans alongside two newcomers who had never competed in speed before.
| How the ISSA World Cup Series scoring works: Wherever a competitor did not participate in an event, the result for that meet is scored as zero. The World Cup Series overall result is the sum of each competitor’s two best meet results, regardless of the total number of events completed. Points per meet equal the meet result of a single meet. At the completion of the series, the competitor with the most points is declared the ISSA Speed Skydiving World Cup Series Champion 2026. |
Day 1
Competitors jumped from Twin Otters. Surface weather conditions were excellent, but a 40 mph crosswind aloft made for more challenging jumps. Despite this, seven competitors were able to exit on a single pass, and everyone made it back to the main landing area without issue. Four rounds were completed before the winds deteriorated (and dust devils formed).
Day 2
The day started later due to low clouds. Once they broke, competitors reached full altitude — but faced even stronger winds aloft than the day before. As the team was preparing to load for competition Round 7, the meet was weathered out due to dust devils and turbulent surface winds. Despite not completing all eight rounds, the competition ran smoothly. There were no technical issues requiring rejumps, and no altitude violations by the pilots. Everyone was safe and had a great time.
Making History
Quan Gan is the first and only speed skydiver to represent China since the ISSA began tracking athlete competition performances in 2000. This is significant because there are currently no claimed FAI Asian Continental Speed Skydiving records (see current FAI records). Quan’s performances over the weekend therefore represent the Asian continent’s best highest average speed at 317.68 km/h (G-1), highest overall average speed at 297.87 km/h (G-1), and maximum vertical speed without a drogue at 320.90 km/h (G-2). (However, because this ISSA meet did not have the judges necessary to ratify these records, they are not official.)
Scores and Podium
OPEN
1st – Niklas Daniel (USA)
2nd – Mervyn O’Connell (AUS)
3rd – Brianne Thompson (USA)
FEMALE
1st – Brianne Thompson (USA)
MASTERS (≥50 years old)
1st – Joel Williamson (USA)
2nd – Paul Wetzel (USA)
Quan and Paul, who are new to competing at speed, will see their performances added to the ISSA’s Eternal Ranking list, which tracks athlete’s competion performances around the globe.
Special thanks to Michael at Flysight for providing the competition units, and to our remote judging team: Toby Adams and Alix Raymond.
Thank you to every competitor — and especially to Mervyn, who traveled here from the other side of the planet. LEGEND. The sportsmanship and camaraderie were unmistakable all weekend.
Special thanks as well to the Skydive Arizona staff and pilots who made this event possible. Training for and competing in ISSA events is a great way to learn and gain exposure to speed skydiving. For information about future events and coaching, visit www.AXISFlightSchool.com.
Upcoming World Championships
Skydive Arizona will host the 6th FAI World Skydiving Championships of Speed Skydiving in October (see bid).
Eloy is the place to train, and to get coaching.
One more thing: please donate to the USA Speed Skydiving Parachute Team! Every gift makes a difference.
Interested in competing at an ISSA event in the United States? Good news: Patrick Kessler and Lauren Pfeifer will be hosting an ISSA event at Chicago Skydiving Center (CSC) on July 17–19. For more information and to register, click here. AXIS will host the ISSA World Cup Series Finals on December 12–13 at Skydive Arizona.
🪂 What actually separates good bodyflight athletes from great ones?
It’s not how many jumps you have. It’s not raw talent. It’s whether you understand the instrument you’re flying—your own body.
How you train that body is foundational. We set out to address the best protocols to do just that, and we covered them for British Skydiving’s Skydive the Mag. Not gym aesthetics. Not generic strength training. A genuine philosophy of physical skill, built around four pillars that directly shape what you can do in freefall, under canopy and in the tunnel.
Strength. Speed. Stamina. Flexibility.
Each one has a direct impact on your capabilities in the air, and most of us are only training one or two of them—if that.
This is the read we wish existed when we were chasing those “elusive moments of flow.” Article below and here—highly recommend clearing 10 minutes and giving it your full attention.
In this installment, we help you to stay calm, navigate a couple of tricky cognitive traps, and—quite literally—use your head.
Enjoy!
To view past issues of the series, click on the links below:
Part 1: Beyond Imprinting
Part 2: Holding Area
Part 3: Landing Pattern
Part 4: Pattern Transformations
Part 5: Pattern Adjustments
We launched our Instagram account this month—yes! one of those!
We’ve held off on spinning one up for a long time, as you know. Why? Well: we’re busy competing, instructing and coaching, and we’ve chosen to spend lots of time and effort making the longer-form content on your YouTube channel amazing.
With that said: it’s time to run the experiment…and we’d love to see you there.
Let us know what you want to see!
In this installment, we help you to develop your gut instincts to the point you can trust them.
Enjoy!
To view past issues of the series, click on the links below:
Part 1: Beyond Imprinting
Part 2: Holding Area
Part 3: Landing Pattern
Part 4: Pattern Transformations
True story: One of the best perks of this work is the opportunity to create the conditions for this kind of grin.
Advait, we’re cheering for you!
We’ve had a pretty big YouTube channel for a pretty long time, but there are certain videos that never stop finding new eyeballs.
This is one of ’em. If your own eyeballs haven’t found it yet, we hope you like it.
Right?!
Here’s the the full backstory.
It’s 2011. Prince William marries Kate Middleton. The final Harry Potter film gets released. Game of Thrones premiers. Steve Jobs dies. And this jump happened. (Whoa.)
We were at Skydive Moab, taking part as organizers at the M.O.A.B. To be fair, it was Mike Bohn who originally floated the idea: what if we took a bowling ball into freefall?
Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.
Nobody knew exactly how a bowling ball would behave in freefall. We added streamers — partly for visibility, partly for drag — and went in with our best guesses. The result surprised everyone, actually: it fell at roughly a fast belly speed, but a slow freefly speed. That sweet spot meant the jumpers could fly around it in multiple body orientations, kicking it back and forth on the way down. You can see that playfulness in the footage — nobody’s fighting the object, they’re flowing with it.
We would be remiss if we didn’t cover the legal bits, right?
No pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.
For anyone wondering whether you can legally toss a bowling ball out of an aircraft: technically, yes — with caveats. FAA regulations do permit dropping objects from aircraft, provided you can ensure the object won’t damage property or injure anyone. That’s why we spotted the aircraft over open BLM land deep in the Utah desert, well clear of people, structures, and roads. We factored in wind drift (which can be as strong in the desert as anywhere) to make sure the ball’s impact point stayed in the clear, and we had a ground crew ready to locate and retrieve the ball afterward.
Critically, the pilot was looped in on the plan, too. That particular communication matters, because the pilot shares regulatory responsibility for anything released from the aircraft.
As Brianne put it: “use good planning, and good consideration, follow the rules, and clean up your trash.”
The bowling ball was the simplest version of this kind of project: a heavy, symmetrical object with streamers attached. But the AXIS crew had also been doing “sky ball” jumps around the same boogie, building custom tennis balls filled with lead shot and experimenting with how much weight produced the right fall rate for different body positions. That kind of R&D is more art than science: you build it, drop it, observe, and adjust.
The boogie itself was memorable beyond the stunts. The boogie heavily involves “Inn-hopps” (jumping offsite areas, which is to say scenic flights to remote landing zones not usually landed-in by parachutes). Oh–and packing in the dining room of a ranch house that, as Nik recalls, “had a slide going from the bedroom down into the living room.” (We also took a trip to nearby Arches National Park at night, where Nik did some night photography among the sandstone formations. PSA: skydiving trips are about more than just the jumps.)
We get why people still watch this ancient video. There’s something irresistible about the premise, right? A bowling ball in freefall is absurd enough for even a whuffo to click on, and the daydream for many sport skydivers is strong enough to watch it twice. Fourteen years later, the video is still one of the most-watched on the AXIS Flight School channel.
Want to see what else our AXIS crew has gotten up to? Check out the full Stunts playlist on our channel:
And if you’re serious about levelling up your own skydiving, reach out to us at https://www.axisflightschool.com.
Is a helicopter jump on your bucket list? Check out the Skydive Arizona events page for the next available Huey jumps.
News and Resources from AXIS Flight School
