Langar based team Chimera to compete in The Skydiving World Championships

A team of skydivers is getting ready to compete in The Skydiving World Championships.

Chimera is a team of skydivers based at Skydive Langar, consisting of four performers and a camera flyer, who travelled to Madrid earlier this month for wind tunnel training.

The team will be competing in The Skydiving World Championships this October, set to take place in Eloy, Arizona.

One of Chimera's performers, Laura Hampton, said: "The Skydiving World Championships bring together the best competitors from around the world every two years to compete in a wide range of skydiving disciplines.

"As the UK's top 'open' team, Chimera will be representing team GB in the 4 way formation skydiving category.

"We're really excited for this and can't wait to be part of the event, which includes 'Olympics style' opening and closing ceremonies, parades, parties and, of course, a lot of skydiving.

"We're heading to Madrid this weekend to train in the wind tunnel there with the help of our coach, who is himself a multiple time world champion.

"The reason for travelling to Spain for this is twofold; firstly, we struggle to access wind tunnels here in the UK due to a lack of availability and secondly, there are no world class coaches based here in the UK so we need to travel."

Each member plays a different role in the team, Laura is the outside centre, James is the inside centre, Sarah and Will are point and tail, representing the top and bottom ends of the formations, and Peter is responsible for filming the teams jumps as the camera flyer.

As all of the team members live close to Skydive Langar a lot of their outdoor training takes place there.

The team splits their training into two main periods, with the first being indoor focused on the second focussing on outdoors.

Laura said: "For the indoor period, we're training discipline and technique and also preparing for the British Indoor Skydiving Championships which takes place this coming February; during this time, we're training primarily in the wind tunnel.

"For the outdoor period, our focus moves to the sky and training the speed, with the addition of new considerations which are only relevant in the sky, such as how we exit the aircraft."

Despite only forming in 2016, the team has already won various titles, including bronze and silver medals at the British National Skydiving Championships and an array of gold medals in the UK Skydiving League.

Laura added: "No matter what happens, we're just so glad and grateful to be able to do what we love, if we can also bring home a gold medal, that'll be even better.

"We're really excited about the World Championships in October and feel very proud to be representing our country; we were sadly unable to attend the last World Championships due to Covid leading to British Skydiving deciding not to send a British delegation, which was such a shame, albeit understandable, so this one feels a long time coming.

"We're also excited to be visiting Arizona, where we have trained quite a few times before and where we will be reunited again with our coach, Niklas, who has been an essential part of our journey so far."