OK, it’s take off time. Ready, set, go!
Vincent’s first jump was a tandem jump in Laon. He had just turned 15.
Yes, I think it was this first jump that made Vince what he is today.
Frédéric’s first jump…
It was in 1989, so he was 10.
His first tandem jump at 10 years old.
I had been doing tandem jumps for about a year, I started in 88, and when he was 10 I asked him "Do you want to come with me?" He said yes.
He’d already been waiting for ages… Oh yes…
So we did a tandem jump. That was it.
He was on the drop zone for the first time just after he left the clinic when he was 8 days old.
We trained for 6 years competing with the French team, so we did at least 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000 jumps.
We have never got bored of jumping. It has always been fun, a passion, not just training, we are basically sons of skydivers.
Both of our fathers have been skydivers for years. We grew up in the skydiving world, it’s our entire life, so it remains a passion.
Here’s your B.A.S.E. jumping parachute.
At last a lightweight parachute!
The flight will last 3 to 4 mins… before jumping. So it’s pretty fast, we have time to separate, and time to chat, to check out the landing site,
then I’ll say “start unfastening, then at the right moment you can jump, you don’t need to push yourself forward when you jump, just let yourself fall."
Have a good jump.
Excellent. That’s B.A.S.E. jumping!
Thanks.
Brilliant dad.
That was awesome, really excellent.
Ok, great. We did what we said we would!
That was cool, a nice little flight.
They were practically born on the drop zone, the caravans stashed in the corner of a hangar, and they grew up there.
They discovered everything imaginable, their friends were friends from the skydiving club, it was like a family,
because when I was in the plane, it was the others that kept an eye on them. It was a real love story between the sky and us.
The Soul Flyers team started out as a group of friends, with different talents,
who mix these talents together and use them to invent new things, new disciplines and above all, have fun together.
Fred and Vince are the new generation. They have done lots of freeflying in skydiving...
They’ve done B.A.S.E. jumping and we have also done a little bit together. The idea is to constantly do something new, to invent and create.
So they obviously have something totally new mixing freeflying with B.A.S.E. jumping, and they are excellent at it, because they are very talented skydivers.
They are not just 2 people, but it’s these 2 people who have done thousands of freeflying jumps together, they have an alchemy.
It’s impossible to speak when freefalling, we look at each other, one glance will show the other exactly what he’s doing,
and about to do, because we’ve done thousands of jumps together from the plane and worked on them.
We did a great little jump, cool. Spinning all over the place. And there’s smoke… it‘s always great to have some orange smoke in the sky. It’s awesome.
What is great is that we were good friends before we started competing. We have always had a laugh and we wanted to jump together.
We started competing, and it went well from the start, and we improved quickly. The unique part is, that since we got together as a team,
we’ve never lost a single competition. That’s cool. So from 2004 until 2009, we’ve won every competition we’ve entered… the gold medal.
Since they’ve stopped competing, their adventure has focused on fun. I think their transformation is amazing.
I’m referring to freefly B.A.S.E. jumping and everything they have contributed from their experience in skydiving and freeflying,
and integrating this into B.A.S.E. jumping is also revolutionary, only these two guys could do that.
Here we are in the wind tunnel, in Prague. It’s a massive giant tube, with a huge powerful fan that blows air and enables us to fly.
In fact, the principle is quite simple, it is a chamber, with huge engines at the top,
that sucks the air up and blows it out underneath. This accelerates the airflow enabling us to fly.
It’s also thanks to the tunnel that we started Freefly B.A.S.E. jumping. The tunnel enabled us to practice movements with such precision, that we later knew we could do from a cliff.
We’ve come here 3 or 4 times since 2010. Anyway, it’s the only cool spot in Europe with huge cliffs and relatively easy access,
allowing us to do what we want. There’s no doubt… it’s the perfect valley for freefly B.A.S.E. jumping.
After doing 10 years of competition and lots of championships, we have always wanted to do some beautiful visuals,
something new, and we wanted to explore B.A.S.E. jumping. I’ve always said to myself you don’t need a judge to tell you if it’s good or not,
we were capable of judging ourselves, at the end of the day, the aim is to make great visuals.
Here I’ll give a push back, and after I’ll engage… We’ll do a complete turn…
After that I’ll go up once, then a second time, I’ll be in a sitting position, so I’ll go head first once, then twice. It spins…
OK guys, ready, set, Let’s go...
It’s easy to visualize the jump, because it’s the same movements that we’ve already done in the wind tunnel or skydiving. The technical part is when you’re head first,
so visually it’s all reversed. You must get your bearings right with the wall. But in B.A.S.E. jumping, we had never done it, so we stepped into the unknown.
A plane trip, a few hours in the car, 4 hours walking, a good set up, and all that for a 20 second jump.
But for 20 seconds of pure pleasure, it’s worth it.