katearnold

He just won UK Nationals, Freestyle A: He'd been training AAA all year in the US, Dubai and Portugal but the team split up less than a month to go so he decided to have a go at Freestyle and came away with a surprise gold medal, mostly down to his awesome camera flyer Dan Guest - so, in case you want to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld7ZyfFyTy4

https://youtu.be/IunZjQVtshE His 1000th jump Still scares me every time he does it

I must admit that this has been high on my list of worries. My son Jamie had a LOT of tunnel time. All he wanted to do was jump out of a plane but he couldn't do that until he was 16 and in the meantime he needed to do something. He ended up competing quite a bit before he got to 16. In the meantime I got him doing tandems so people could talk him through canopy piloting. When he got to AFF I got Scotty Milne to coach him along with a group of other tunnel rats as I knew it would have its own set of problems. I let him jump at 16 so I could ground him if he ****ed about at all - I've only done it once. I got him to do a couple of canopy courses straight off and I've managed to find people to mentor him. He's now 18 and just got a bronze in freefly at Nationals. There is NO WAY ON EARTH that I would let him begin to think about LO or coaching yet. He has 840 something jumps but I still think he has a huge amount to learn. He's flying a 129 main now, but I've only let him downsize really, really slowly. The thing is after hanging around the wind tunnels for the past 11 years of my life I've seen a lot of people who are shit hot in the tunnel take to the sky and frankly seriously scare me and I'm a whuffo but I've still seen videos that have made me cringe. So, please don't think all tunnel rats are going to take to the sky and behave like dicks. Jamie is always learning and maybe one day he'll start thinking about coaching, but I honestly don't know - he just loves to fly but he respects the sky and the other flyers in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75u6ZpZQ3so for those who are interested (I also apologise to those people who find it annoying - like sadly most of my family do and can't see why my son would want to "waste his time" jumping out of planes)

Hi, there was a thread a long time ago that ended up causing a lot of controversy and I don't want to post on that for fear of upsetting people. I was told that I should really do follow up in Bonfire of The Vanities, so this is just for people who are interested in what Jamie did next. So, apart from coming 11th in AAA at The Bodyflight World Challenge in the tunnel this year with his team Co-motion, Jamie finally got to do his first sky competition yesterday having turned 18 and he got a Bronze medal at The British Nationals in Freefly with his team Volosity Freefly. Next he's back to the tunnel to train with his team The Dynamos ready to do dynamic at Inflight Dubai Clash of Champions and he's going to carry on trying to get to 1000 jumps whilst he's still 18 (he's on 800 and something right now but the weather has been a serious problem this summer). Thanks to everyone who has taken an interest and been supportive.