Hello!

Thanks for taking the time to read Team 4Mula’s story. We’re now on a journey towards the 2017 Skydiving World Cup taking place in August, and we need some help to get us to a place where we can win a medal. Watch our minute long montage for a quick update – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbYP2MpThdU. You can also find us on YouTube by searching for ‘4mula TV’.

Who are Team 4mula?

We have been the UK’s second best 4-way (a team of 4 skydivers) formation skydive team for the last 2 years, and have qualified as one of four teams to represent GB at the Skydiving World Cup in 2017.

The team has been competing in the sport for 7 years so far winning various British National medals, and each of the team have had individual success in other areas and with other teams over the years. One of the team is a multiple world champion and US National Champions spanning the last three decades! 4mula was proud to compete for GB at the last World Cup of Skydiving in 2015 for the first time and placed 5^th overall, and 4^th in Europe which were both outstanding results for our first real top flight competition.

Our Team Members, Joey Jones, David Rodgers, Pete Mather, Ady King and Nick Robinson (Videographer) have dreamt of becoming the GB National team and representing our Country at World Level competition ever since we became part of this fast paced, exciting and competitive sport over 10 years ago. We have trained and competed on different teams in the past, racking up a combined total of over 20,000 skydives to get to the performance level we’re at now.

How do you compete at skydiving?

There are several different disciplines within the competitive world of Sports Parachuting, and the blue-ribbon event at national and world level competition is something called ‘4-way Formation Skydiving – this is what we compete in. We have a team of 5 people (4 x formation skydivers, 1 x team videographer who jumps with us), compete over 10 rounds of competition. There are 38 unique formations that are drawn randomly prior to the competition starting and because of a rule that no round can have more than 6 individual formation points in, there is a total of 2,070,936 different skydive sequences that could make up the 10 rounds of competition! Each round is judged based on the maximum number of formations that can be completed in 35 seconds from leaving the aircraft. The team with the highest combined average score over the 10 rounds of competition win the competition. The table of participants is like many other sports. The team with the highest number of completed formations over 10 rounds win, followed by the second highest, third, and so on. Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals are given. Have a look at our video clip to get an idea of how it works and how it’s judged.

What help do you want?

We have once again qualified to represent GB at the 2017 World Cup in Saarlouis, Germany, and we are planning to improve on our last result and bag the European Bronze medal. Skydiving isn’t a cheap sport and at the elite levels like many sports, athletes fund themselves as well as obtaining grants and bursaries from governing bodies and associations. We need financial support to be able to train more and realistically win a medal!

As you can imagine we’re very proud to be able to represent our country in a sport we love, and we’re also excited about the journey to get us there. It’s a big challenge but one we’re all ready for. We’re planning to do 400 team skydives in preparation for the World Cup and complete around 50% of those at a UK parachuting centre, the British Parachute School at Langar in Nottinghamshire. We have a strong relationship with this centre and staff who are magnificent in supporting us to achieve our best. The other 50% of our skydives will be completed at overseas training camps. Here, we can take advantage of better weather conditions and the predictability of being able to complete all our training jumps. For safety reasons parachuting, can’t be conducted in cloudy or windy conditions which sometimes the UK is famous for!

Typically, we will do 12 jumps per day whilst we are training overseas. That means 2 full weeks of overseas training camps to keep us on track against our season target. All of our overseas training will be completed at personal expense with each team jump costing around 100 GBP. This means that each team member will spend 3500 GBP on overseas training jumps (this is without the added associated costs of coaching fees, travel/accommodation fees, and the re-packing of parachute costs).

We are grateful of any amount of support you feel you can provide the team with as we share our journey, experiences and success with you in our preparation towards national representation at this prestigious event.

Please don’t hesitate to contact the team [email protected] if you have any queries or feel that you can support us further in any way.

Best Wishes

Team 4Mula