How This Girl Takes Indoor Skydiving to the Next Level | Obsessed | WIRED

this is sydney kennen she's flying on a jet of air traveling at over 100 miles per hour she's one of the world's best indoor skydivers and she's only 14. it kind of feels like the matrix i'm pretty much defying gravity sydney holds numerous top prizes at competitions all around the world she's been the u.s junior national champion three years in a row and she holds a guinness world record the world record i have is the most box split spins in a minute in the wind tunnel i got 68 in total i was a little dizzy because it was for a whole minute straight but usually i don't really get dizzy in there for sydney taking skydiving outside of the tunnel doesn't appeal as much as you might think i might want to skydive when i'm older it's five years away so i might change my mind i'm also kind of scared of heights at right field at the headquarters of the air materiel command aeronautical engineers are working on problems of research and development this is one of the first wind tunnels built in 1945. it's also where aircraft machinist and skydiver jack tiffany became the first person to fly in a wind tunnel early wind tunnels built for human flight featured the fan below the skydiver in 1997 the fans were moved above and the chamber was enclosed this is known as an open flow system but it wasn't until 2005 that the modern wind tunnels like this one were born this building houses a recirculating system that is key to the modern vertical wind tunnel there are four giant fans at the top of the chamber 12 feet in diameter that pull the air up the air is recirculated back down these two shafts and then back up again this allows for turbulent free controllable wind many say the sensation is very similar to the real thing if you move your arm a little bit you'll like turn or go to the side and if you like straighten your legs and arms at the same time you'll go up and if you like bend them you'll go down the wind speeds can be cranked up to 185 miles an hour everyone has their own unique wind speed that they fly at what my main wind speed is around like 100 10 115 maybe but i can fly up to like the highest speeds in almost all the tunnels higher wind speeds allow you to make quicker moves but don't expect to start out at this level you have to make pretty small body movements because the higher wind speed affects it more wind speeds also they can be affected by what you're wearing so if you're wearing a baggier suit you'll be at a lower wind speed because there's more drag but if you're wearing a tighter suit which most freestylists do you're usually at a higher speed there are four basic body positions in indoor skydiving the first one you're pretty much laying on your belly you have your arms spread out and your legs spread out the instructor will tell you to like bend your legs or straighten your legs to move you and you can also turn your like use your hands to turn and also use your feet to turn and they don't have to be big movements at all small movements go a long way the second one you would learn is back flying so you're kind of sitting in a chair but on your back you can use your feet to turn your hands to turn you can go flat to go up and scrunch up to go down the third would be sit which is you're sitting in a chair and you have your arms at like a 90 degree angle you can straighten your legs to go back and bend them to go forward and the last one that you would learn would be head down you can use your head to turn this time and your arms and legs are turned again and then you can straighten your legs to go up and bend them to go down that one took me the longest to learn it's really hard because everything's upside down which is kind of difficult to know where you are in the tunnel sydney competes in a number of different categories such as freestyle where competitors create their own routines other categories include formation skydiving a more traditional approach to the sport and dynamic where teams of two or even four skydivers are judged off specific sequences that they must perform with freestyle every move in your routine counts from the second you enter the door i try to do as many hard and difficult tricks in my routine as i can while keeping it pretty and smooth and graceful sydney has big goals she hopes this sport will soon qualify for the olympics so she can compete for a gold medal but it hasn't yet caught on outside of a niche community some of the challenges are like trying to explain to people that it's actually a sport because a lot of people think it's just like a fun amusement ride but they don't really realize that it takes a lot to be an indoor squad ever the first time i started flying was when i was four years old yeah buddy i was super nervous sydney took classes when she first started but she quickly outgrew them as her skills progressed it just like set me up for my main body positions and stuff and i started training on my own sydney doesn't have her own coach so her parents help when they can i haven't had a coach in a long time a lot of people have like access to really nice coaches so pretty much my coaches are me my mom and my dad my mom and like me talk a lot in like sign language or weird like signs about like what's working and what's not working in my routine she finds unique ways to train outside of the tunnel so she can stay at the top of her game outside i do a lot of stretching and trampolining and contortion she uses her training to create new tricks like this one she calls the scorpion one of the contortion moves that i learned was where you can touch your feet to your head so i was like maybe i can do this in the tunnel maybe i'll just try it i remember trying it and trying and trying it and like one of the last rotations i had i finally just like tapped my head and i was like oh yeah this is amazing classic sydney scorpion moves in 2018 for nationals i got into the last round and i was just like you know what i'll just do a scorpion maybe i'll win so i got first for best trick off of that which is pretty cool sydney trains hard two times a week she goes to the tunnel after school and applies her gymnastic work to her flying so it's like it's pretty long days because then i also have to do homework and like i like want to talk to my friends sometimes and stuff my most memorable moment my first competition even though i wasn't very good i knew like i want to do this this is what i want to do for a long long time

Channel: WIRED

Views: 769,955

Rating: 4.9137115 out of 5

Keywords: indoor skydiving, skydiving, skydiving obsessed, obsessed skydiving, skydiving indoors, indoors skydiving, wired indoors skydiving, wired skydiving indoors, wired indoor skydiving, sydney kennett, sydney kennett skydiving, indoor skydiving champion, skydiving champion, wind tunnel, windtunnel, wind tunnel skydiving, air tunnel, air tunnel wired, air tunnel skydiving, world record skydiving, skydiving world record, indoor skydiving world record, skydiving dance, wired

Id: pmVAkb4naKk

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020