Success is in the air for these Singapore skydivers

SPH Brightcove Video
Kyra Poh, Vera Poh and Kai Minejima-Lee share the thrills and spills behind the sport.

SINGAPORE – Visit iFly Singapore at Sentosa on a Saturday morning, and you may see a group of indoor skydivers performing synchronised racing in its wind tunnel.

They are pro-flyers practising dynamic flying, a competitive speed discipline that requires the flyers to perform several sequences together in a two-way or four-way team.

Pro-flyers who have reached Static Flying Level 3 of the International Bodyflight Association can register for the weekly training coached by the Singapore indoor skydiving athletes.

They are Vera Poh, 13, Kai Minejima-Lee, 13, Isabelle Koh, 15, Jordan Lee, 18, Kyra Poh, 20, and Choo Yi Xuan, 21.

Last month, 18 pro-flyers from Saturday Dynamic Training showcased what they learnt at Skydivers Night, a friendly indoor skydiving competition organised by iFly Singapore. The competition, which first started in 2012, resumed on Feb 24 after two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Saturday Dynamic Training and Skydivers Night are two avenues in which the Singapore indoor skydiving athletes have been engaging, growing and giving back to the community.

This is all while they prepare for their upcoming competition, the 4th FAI World Indoor Skydiving Championships to be held in Slovakia from April 19 to 22. The six Singapore indoor skydiving athletes aspire to win, or at least be in the top three places in every category they are participating in.

What is indoor skydiving?

In indoor skydiving, there is no jumping out of planes. Instead, skydivers are held up by gusts of wind generated in a large, vertical wind tunnel, making it seem like they are flying.

The tunnel’s wind speed can be adjusted to accommodate different types of flyers.

“Skydiving makes your body feel as if you’re floating, and you’re free to do whatever you want, manoeuvre however you please,” said Lee, who started when he was seven.

Beginners of the sport typically start with belly flying, which is a skydiving position where their bellies face the ground while they float in the tunnel. Over time, and with consistent practice, they are able to fly in a sitting position or perform tricks upside-down.

For Kyra, an undergraduate in ESSEC Business School, skydiving allows her to do the “impossible”.

She said: “On the ground, there’s no way I can do one twist flip or somersault. But in the tunnel, we can do five or 10 or 20 different twists at the same time.”

Often touted as Singapore’s darling in the sport, Kyra has won 60 medals since she started competing in 2012, 45 of which are gold.

“It feels like our superpower,” added Singapore’s only indoor skydiving athlete who is sponsored by Red Bull.

How they got started

The Singapore athletes first skydived when they were between the ages of seven and nine, with seven being the minimum age to indoor skydive in Singapore. In some parts of the world, children can skydive from the age of three.

Most of the athletes said they enjoyed their first skydive so much that they wanted to do it again. They eventually picked up the sport competitively.

Kai said: “As I got slightly better, I started to compete in small local competitions, especially Skydivers Night which is organised by iFly. I had so much fun that I wanted to do more, and I wanted to go bigger, so less than a year after I started flying, I went to Australia for my first international competition.”

Fellow athlete Lee said that he chose to pursue indoor skydiving as it makes him a bit different. It will be a good conversation starter when he meets new people once he starts his polytechnic studies, added the Institute of Technical Education graduate.

Kai Minejima-Lee competed in the solo freestyle junior category and won gold in the 4th FAI World Cup of Indoor Skydiving held in Charleroi, Belgium, in 2022. PHOTO: VANIA DA RUI

Singapore’s indoor skydiving athletes currently compete in two main categories, freestyle and dynamic.

The freestyle category is a solo discipline where flyers perform 75- to 90-second routines set to music in two types of freestyle rounds.

In the free round, skydivers choreograph their own routines without any additional requirements, while in compulsory rounds, skydivers have to incorporate pre-determined moves.

“For (freestyle), you get to use up all the space (and) you get to express yourself,” said Koh, a student in Methodist Girls’ School (Secondary) who is participating in the solo freestyle junior category in the upcoming competition.

The two-way and four-way dynamic categories are team disciplines where two or four flyers compete in a team.

In the speed round of the category, teams have to complete a series of compulsory patterns – randomly drawn before the competition begins – as quickly as possible.

In the free round, the team has to perform a routine they choreographed, which lasts 60 seconds in the two-way dynamic category, and 90 seconds in the four-way dynamic category.

Vera, who is the younger sister of Kyra, prefers dynamic flying more than freestyle and wants to be the “Usain Bolt” of skydiving.

“I like that I’m able to go as fast as I can in the tunnel, and I just really like the thrilling feeling and the adrenaline,” said the Meridian Secondary School student.

What it takes to fly

To compete at world level, the athletes practise at least four days a week during off-seasons and up to six days a week nearing major competitions. Each practice session in the tunnel lasts 15 minutes, and the skydivers train for one to two hours each day.

While that does not seem like a lot, Kai, who is homeschooled, said: “What some people don’t understand is that indoor skydiving is a very physically strenuous sport, and it requires us to use so many muscles in our body. After 15 minutes, we come out, and we’re drenched in sweat and super, super tired.”

Isabelle added that they are in constant motion and there is no chance to rest when inside the tunnel. “We never stop moving,” she said.

The athletes train their stamina and build up muscles by running on a treadmill and doing core muscle exercises. They also train their flexibility by doing stretches such as splits.

As Kyra dons a white skintight suit when competing in the freestyle category, she has cut meat from her diet since 2020 to maintain her figure. She now obtains her protein from eggs, tofu, mushrooms and protein powder.

Although she is occasionally tempted to break her diet, her mother, who is also the manager of the six athletes, makes sure she keeps to it, she said.

Her father helps to ease the temptations and makes it more convenient for her by packing food that meets her dietary requirements and tastes fantastic, such as sweet potatoes and caramelised onions with tofu, she added.

Kyra Poh won gold in the solo freestyle open category at the 4th FAI World Cup of Indoor Skydiving held in Charleroi, Belgium, in 2022.  PHOTO: VANIA DA RUI

Practising at iFly Singapore for long hours also means that the young skydivers have to forgo time with friends, as well as sleep.

“My friends used to invite me for movies, but I had to eat dinner in the car, and come (to iFly Singapore), and train until night-time,” said Kyra.

Choo, who is a Singapore Management University student, said: “On good days, I can sleep at 1am but, for the past few weeks, I’ve been sleeping (at) like 3am or 4am. (Past) me would not think that I would (now) be in university and juggle my sport at the same time.”

She had taken multiple breaks from competing in the past as she was unable to cope with her studies, indoor skydiving and swimming, which she also did competitively while she was attending the Singapore Sports School.

Although the six athletes have had to make a lot of sacrifices to compete in the sport, they shared that it has made them self-disciplined, mature and confident individuals.

(From left) Vera Poh, Kai Minejima-Lee, Isabelle Koh, Jordan Lee, Choo Yi Xuan and Kyra Poh will be representing Singapore at the 4th FAI World Indoor Skydiving Championships in Slovakia. ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

Challenges of a niche sport

As indoor skydiving is a relatively new sport in Singapore, Kyra and Choo faced scepticism from other competitors when they first started competing overseas as Team Firefly, and had to “gain people’s respect”.

Team Firefly, formed in 2012, is a two-way dynamic team consisting of the duo.

Kyra Poh recalled that somebody then said that the sport was not meant for children.

Despite the doubts, the pair proved the naysayers wrong in October 2018 when they placed first in the two-way dynamic speed category in the 3rd FAI World Cup of Indoor Skydiving held in Bahrain.

Since then, the Singapore indoor skydiving athletes have been winning almost every single category they joined or at least podiumed, said Kyra.

Now, the younger Singapore athletes face a different set of challenges – keeping up the standards Team Firefly has set.

Kai Minejima-Lee and Vera Poh also competed in the two-way dynamic junior category in the 4th FAI World Cup of Indoor Skydiving held in Belgium, in 2022. PHOTO: VANIA DA RUI

Having a world champion as her sister, Vera does feel pressured sometimes as “people expect (them) to win”, and she feels like she has “big shoes to fill”.

Despite this, the sister duo has won gold in all three competitions that they have competed in since they first paired up in 2021.

“It was always my grandfather’s dream to watch me and my sister fly together. Sadly he passed away when I was only seven years old. At that time, I only just started indoor skydiving,” said Vera.

“But whenever I fly with my sister during competitions, or whenever we’re doing our rounds, I would always think of him watching us and being really proud of how far we’ve come as a team.”

The younger Singapore athletes have also been giving the more experienced indoor skydiver Kyra a run for her money.

“Last time, whenever I was training in Singapore, I always felt like I had no competition.

“But now that we have (a community of really strong flyers), it definitely is very stressful, but I can feel us all getting stronger together,” she said.

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