Jasper van der Meer and me met up in '05 at Lapalisse, France (thnx Kuri!) and we started to talk about setting up a team but also to start organizing freefly events and coaching weekends ourselves. That was the start of ToraTora in the end of 2005 and the beginning of a couple of wonderful years!
The events we organized quickly grew bigger and bigger and now it was also time to start competing with Martijn van Dam as our cameraflyer.
We became Dutch national freeflyteam in 2007 and qualified for the 2007 Worldcup freefly in Stupino, Russia. And we didn’t do badly at all! After round 1 we were even standing on 1st place! Nice vibes and feeling!
We ended on 4th place, only 0, 1 point behind the bronze medal (Skywalkers)…That did hurt a little ;)!!
My favorite competition though was the 2007 Worldchallenge in Bedford where we ended 5th. What I really liked about that competition is that the audience is standing right behind the glass and that does give some extra tension! The feeling afterwards is pretty intense and rewarding!
I have also enjoyed giving coaching to a lot of people. Great when you work together to get to new stuff and then that student in front of you is starting to pick it up (with especially Baldr Schrage showing húúúge improvement)!
And then there was this new challenge filming Sarah doing freestyle, now, thát's flying!
Of course my "last" jump was pretty special as well...But I did survive that crash and spend 4 months in 3 different hospitals getting a lot of support from all the people I’ve met in those years. I’m you all so deeply thankful for that!
Live love! ;) ♥
"Stuff":
- 1st jump: 16th of July 2002 (Soulac-sur-Mer, France. With Auke van Agteren and Meüs van der Poel)
- "Last" jump: 7th of April 2008 (Eloy, USA. With Pepijn Swint)
- Total jumps: 3000
- Favorite canopy: Precision Aerodynamics XAOS27
- Favorite suit: Sonic V2.0
- Favorite freefly helmet: Gath (Nice and light!)
- Favorite camera helmet: Rawa (Saved my face, need to say more?)
- Favorite dropzone: Skydive Arizona. Eloy, USA.
- Tunnel time: +300
- Tunnels flown: Skyventure Perris Valley/Skyventure Orlando/Skyventure Arizona/Bodyflight Bedford/Airkix/Freezone Moscow/
Indoorskydive Roosendaal/Abu Dhabi
- Favorite tunnel: Skyventure Arizona
- Base: 40 jumps
- "Coolest" spot: City-center of Amsterdam! :)!!
- Groundlaunching: 10 flights
Competition results:
- 4th place Worldcup freefly 2007 (Stupino, Russia)
- 5th place Bodyflight Worldchallenge 2007 (Bedford, UK)
- Dutch national champion freefly 2007 (Texel, Netherland)
- Dutch national champion freefly 2006 (Teuge, Netherlands)
- 3rd place Dutch national championships freefly 2003 with team “Smelly Feet”; Bas Kuis&Edu Mertz (Stadtlohn, Germany)
"Worky and so":
- ToraTora “total in- & outdoor freefly adventure”, Skydive Arizona, USA, 2008.
- IndoorSkydive Roosendaal, The Netherlands 2008.
- ToraToraMeet Spa, Belgium 2007.
- PCV freeflystages Zwartberg/Moorsele, Belgium 2007.
- IndoorSkydive Roosendaal, The Netherlands, 2007.
- ToraTora windtunnelcamp Bodyflight Bedford, UK, December 2006 & March 2007.
- Freefly Xpression Lille, France, part I & II 2006, part III 2007.
- Airboss Seville, Spain, April 2006.
- Dropzone Aversi, Denmark, April 2006.
- Airboss Beni Mellal, Morocco 2006.
- ToraToraMeets, The Netherlands, part I, II & III 2005, part IV, V & VI 2006, part VII 2007.
- Airboss 4Fun Summerboogie, France 2005, 2006 & 2007.
- Nationaal Paracentrum Teuge, The Netherlands 2005.
Other:
- Dutch national freeflyteam 2007 & 2008.
- Atmosphere Dolphin license AD-a404. (With Mike Swanson, Perris Valley, USA 2005.)
- Participant freefly eurorecord. Empuriabrava, Spain 2005.
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