Airspeed Celebrates 30 Years and Hosts 28th Arizona Challenge

Above: Jumpers complete the challenging Ottley Sword formation. Photo by Craig O'Brien.

Over Memorial Day weekend, skilled formation skydivers from across the globe descended on Skydive Arizona in Eloy for the 28th annual Arizona Challenge. This signature invitational event, hosted by world champion formation skydiving team Arizona Airspeed, aims to complete creative, interesting and exceptional big-way skydives. This year, the weekend also served as a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Arizona Airspeed.

The organizers recruited jumpers from throughout the skydiving community for the Arizona Challenge, with more than 100 skydivers from a variety of teams, countries and big-way organizations joining the event. Numerous Airspeed alumni also took part in the jumps, including original-lineup members Jack Jefferies, Kirk Verner and Mark Kirkby. The size of the event required a media team to match, with Taylor Buffington, Elliot Byrd, David Cherry, Mark Kirschenbaum, John Lyman, Mike McGowan, Craig O’Brien and Alex Swindle each taking part in capturing the action.

For the first two days, jumpers broke into five groups, each led by an Arizona Airspeed member. Each group got to experience unique and creative two-plane 20-ways, experimenting with a variety of slots and formations. The talent this year was exceptional, and many participants got to experience several multi-point 20-way jumps.

On Sunday, Airspeed introduced the first 100-way formation, inspired by Airspeed’s six 4-way world championship Ottley Swords. The Ottley Sword is a traveling trophy that the current world champion team gets to display at home for two years until the next world championship. Throughout the day, jumpers traveled to 18,000 feet AGL in a five-plane formation expertly flown by Skydive Arizona’s pilots. The organizers pinpointed corrections for the group during each debrief, and each jump was better than the one before it. On the final jump of the day, the group successfully built the swords and got to end the day in celebration.

For the final day, the organizers introduced a more challenging formation inspired by the Airspeed logo. The organizers prepped the group extensively on sight pictures, build order and grip taking. All jumpers needed to bring discipline and tenacity to the jump, no small task when jumping repeatedly from high altitudes. Although the jump showed promise as it built, a completion remained just out of reach at the end of the day.

As the event closed out, spirits were high from both four days of fantastic skydives and from all of the connections made during the 30-Year Airspeed Reunion. Skydiving is 10% about great jumps, and 90% about the community; this Arizona Challenge was fortunate enough to have plenty of both.

Kelsey Marshall | D-40422
Casa Grande, Arizona