Kyra Poh and the art of the air

SINGAPORE – As you fall to earth from 14,000 feet, the very shape of life shifts. Landscapes alter and the geometry of things changes. Pyramids look like squares. Take Kyra Poh’s word for it. At 20, she’s seen life from angles you probably never will.

She’s leapt out of a C-130 Hercules and landed metres from the pyramids of Giza. Has stepped out of hot-air balloons, stood on another skydiver’s shoulders and fallen gleefully into the silence. There is a different air about this athlete.

It’s worth mentioning right now that Poh is the worst dancer. Don’t sue me, these are her words. There’s more. When she was learning to drive, she’d signal right when the instructor said left.

Except this is her only on land. Unremarkable. In the air, she’s exceptional. In her element, you might say. When she’s upside down in a wind tunnel, she’s transformed. When she’s flying, she turns into an aerial figure skater. Kids look for Harry Potter books for a 12th birthday gift;  she chose a tandem skydive.

You shield yourself from the wind, Poh, one of Singapore’s truly prodigious athletes, lives in it. In the sky, she’s leapt from planes over 300 times. In wind tunnels, in winds up to 270kmh, she’s won enough silverware in international indoor skydiving to stuff a small vault. Her feats are enough to make you giddy and Guinness take notice. Once she did 68 backward somersaults in a minute.

“In the air,” Poh says, “I feel like I can do a lot of things that I can’t do on the ground... I feel like my body has more abilities when I’m floating and levitating versus when I’m on land. I feel like I can do anything that I want to do.” 

Curiosity brought me to Poh, who competes in the World Indoor Skydiving Championships this week (in 2019 she came second), because our lives are predominantly spent with land and water athletes. Yet, there’s a third tribe out there. Air people.  

Free soloists, wingsuit flyers, cliff divers, aerobats, slackliners, skydivers. Life lived among eagles and angels. Some are high risk, most just high heart-rate. Sports which aren’t spectator friendly and not always easy to sell to grandma.

Imagine Poh, nice Asian girl (stereotype alert), telling her grandma that she likes “taking a one-way plane ticket up and then jumping out of the plane”. She laughs. Grandma probably didn’t but became an ally.

When Poh got a chance to skydive over the pyramids, her university didn’t give her time off. Which is when grandma stepped in.

“I was super surprised when my grandmother just said, you know what, like you only have this opportunity once in a lifetime. Why don’t you just take a gap year and do it and then see if this school is something that you want to do in the future.”

So she did.

Earth folks don’t always fully comprehend such sky people, for both tribes view gravity differently. To fly is to unchain the spirit and as Richard Bach wrote in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, “He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all”.

In the sky, Poh’s having fun and learning. In the tunnel, she’s pure competitor. The day we meet, she performs briefly at iFLY Singapore for our photographer and her control in the wind, like an artistic swimmer under water, is staggering. “I feel like the element of air is something that I need in order for my body to perform.”

Like a dancer, her work demands careful composition but this floating sport is deceptive. Art is hard work. “For 15 minutes,” says Poh, “when I’m going super intense, I burn up to like 600 calories.” In a routine of 90sec, she can cram in 15-20 tricks.

In the tunnel, says Poh, “it’s more competitive. We have way more competitors”. In some nations, you can start indoors at the age of three. Outdoors, the rule is 16 or 18, depending on the country. There’s also the matter of practice time. As Poh says, “for outdoor skydiving, let’s say I can maximum do 12 jumps in a day. That’s only 12 minutes of training (a jump has roughly 60sec of free-fall and four minutes under the parachute). But in the tunnel, I train two hours a day.”

The tunnel is safer, the outdoors wilder. Free-falling in the sky is a delight but landing is like another sport. She wears an altimeter but anyway, at around 4,000 feet, a beeper in her helmet tells her it’s time. Tug. Open. Float.

“From the sky,” says Poh, “although the landing area seems big, it’s actually kind of tiny”. They have to learn about thermals, sort out glide ratios and be aware of the vertical and horizontal separation with other canopies. “It’s like driving on the road, right? You have to keep to your lane. But in the sky, there are no lines.”

Right now, Poh’s tuning herself for the indoor world championships and nerves must sit beside pressure. She began competing as a kid and it’s been a rapid education involving tears, grit and expectation. “We had to force ourselves to grow up really fast at a young age.”

Once she’s finished indoors, maybe she’ll head for the clouds. “It feels like the happiest I am is when I’m jumping out of the plane.” Joy yet serious craft and, to ensure she’s mentally prepared, she won’t jump unless she’s recited seven words to herself.

“Adaptable. Alert. Attentive. Aware. Agile. Accurate. Awesome.”

And then she’s falling. And flying. Bird with a helmet on.