This is the event all this weekend at Dijon-Bourgogne airport. For the first time the French Parachuting Federation organizes its French Championships of Artistic Disciplines and Relative Flight. In total, nearly 30 teams are in competition, including a duo from home. A father and a son who succeeded in everything.
This competition is a success, first for the place. “It’s ideal here, with plenty of room to land and the staff is great”assures Sébastien Chambet, the national trainer of artistic disciplines for the Federation. “In artistic disciplines, we have 14 teams in this championship. It’s true that after the covid, it’s a good vintage because there is a small drop and canceled competitions. We have a championship that is picking up again”he adds.
The stakes are high this year since the first two teams of each discipline you can be selected for the French team and thus represent the nation at the World Championships in Eloy, United States, in October.
A duo of champions
A goal that two of his performers that he follows want to achieve. They are the Dijonnais, Cyril and Lucas Colin, freestyle specialists, a 45-second free fall event in which Lucas performs all sorts of acrobatics in front of Cyril, his videographer. And the two men know each other very well since they are father and son. “I hadn’t necessarily thought of teaming up with my father, but the fact of jumping together a lot and seeing that there was something to do, I said to myself why not propose to him. This is an opportunity also for him to teach me the inner workings of skydiving”, says Lucas.
At 19, it was not the fact of sometimes following his father in competition that pushed him to start competitions either, but after simulating jumps in the wind tunnel. He also became French champion in Dynamic 2. “It was a real crush”.
And this champion has something to hold on to. His father also chained the titles, including that of world champion of Freestyle in 2008. Since then, he had decided to retire. A retirement aborted for two years with the formation of his duo with his son. A duo full of complicity and admiration. “My son has surpassed me. Already by his experience in the wind tunnel, but also by his past as a gymnast“, recognizes Cyril, aged about fifty years.
– Virginia Vandeville
There is an osmosis between us
Between the father, now in real estate and the constable son, the agreement is more than there. “Working together is more positive than negative, there is an osmosis between us”warns Cyril. “We dare to say things to each other so it’s almost simpler”, adds Lucas. A duo that works since they came second in their discipline last year at the French Championships. A place that they are aiming for again this year and more than ever because if that would guarantee them a place in the French team and therefore in the World Championship, it is also the only and last time to meet them again together. “It’s time for me to stop and do something else. And then he has to evolve in his professional life”, concludes Cyril. They will therefore give everything during their 7 jumps this weekend.
No grigri for that, before each jump, they don’t deviate a thing, their tchek.