This past weekend, Skydive Chicago began warming up for one of their most challenging endeavors yet. Their goal? To attempt not one, but two skydiving records (the Vertical World Record and the 250-Way Illinois State Record), back-to-back. Keep an eye on the sky in Ottawa from August 16 to 22 to watch these spectacular record attempts! Spectators are more than welcome to visit the grounds and cheer on jumpers.

The Vertical World Record is a single-point skydive where all jumpers exit their planes and fly together to create one big formation. This head-down world record attempt involves 9 aircraft flying to an altitude of 19,000 feet. This gives the group 60 seconds of working time. To break the record, all 200 jumpers must carefully lock arms in a pre-assigned, intricate pattern (with no errors) before separating and filling the sky with 200 parachutes.

The “250” record attempts will see skydivers jump in the traditional belly-to-earth style, with jumpers reaching speeds around 120 miles per hour. This Illinois State record attempt will be the largest formation attempted since the 2006 400-way world record was set in Thailand.

We reached out to the head of Skydive Chicago’s marketing department, Melissa, who brought along seasoned skydiver and participant in the attempts, Tamara Bartlett, to learn more about the record-breaking process.

Melissa spoke on the challenges of organizing and executing such an event.

“So weather could be a big challenge. There’s so many different moving parts of this incredible feat. So, there’s the aircraft, oxygen, the pilots, the athletes we have, judges. We have to make sure all the paperwork for every athlete is submitted correctly. The organizers of the event, I have to ensure that they submit the correct formation with the correct list of athletes in order for us to ensure that is a world record because there’s a lot of you have to make sure that everything is done correct by the rules.”

Bartlett, who has been skydiving for eleven years, explained the role that Skydive Chicago has played in the sport and record-breaking. She also participated in the 2022 attempt for the 200-way record.

“It’s just really cool to see everyone putting this much effort in, because it has been years since we’ve had, you know, a successful, really big skydive. So, the feat of engineering that Skydive Chicago has had to put in, to get all the people here, and make sure we’re all well trained, and make sure the planes, like most of us talking about all the different things to the plane’s ATC (air traffic control), and those coordinations, is Skydive Chicago,” Bartlett said. 

“They also just championed excellence in skydiving, like across the board, both competition and fun jumping and things. And so, this place is… it’s pretty magical. They have done so much for the sport, and I think you can see that with this record. Like, no one’s gonna say that ‘This was an easy thing to set up,’ and I think some people would be like, “Man, I don’t know… [was it] worth bringing hundreds of people here for a weekend and just stressing ourselves out to see if we could make these records?’ And Skydive says ‘Yeah, it’s always worth it. It’s worth doing the hard things.'”

Melissa also mentioned her own relationship with skydiving as a sport.

“It took a really long time to fall in love with the sport. I can’t even remember the moment that it happened, but I do remember that moment that I just couldn’t get enough of it, and I was incredibly excited. It went from rolling up to the drop zone to skydive, feeling dread, to coming to the drop zone, feeling at home. So, there was a definitely an evolution, a relationship that I built with the sport that just happened over time. And I think that just was showing up, showing up, showing up, showing up, and never been giving in and persevering. And I don’t consider myself and naturally talented athlete,” Melissa said. 

“Now, I’m looking back at a career of having 26 world records a handful of national championships, I sit on the board of directors for our national organization, and I’m still very active in the sport.”

Melissa is not planning on participating in the record attempts, but said “if they need me, I’ll show up.”

Obviously after all this talk of skydiving, we had to make a visit to Skydive Chicago! Melissa gave a fantastic tour of the marvelous facilities at Skydive Chicago.

While we were there, we had the opportunity to ask Gorka, a judge for the world record, some questions about the judging process. These types of record attempts typically require extensive paperwork and admin work, including confirming all jumpers are properly licensed, scored, and more. 

“Once that is completed and the roster is fine, then it’s all about during the event, making sure that whatever is declared by the organizer is completely understood by the judges, because that is what’s going to get judged after the fact, right? A lot of the times, organizers have to change the plan depending on the needs. Depending on the engineering, you know, [plans] just change,” said Gorka.

It is crucial that jumpers have every single detail down to a point. Gorka mentioned that entire record attempts have been disqualified simply because the wrong hand grip was used during the attempt. Gorka furthered explained the ways judges will analyze the attempts, such as video analysis.

“It is of extreme importance to make sure that, first of all, there is written evidence of it. There has to be a diagram. And second, that the judges understand what the organizers are trying to do. And sometimes a diagram is enough, because a lot of times if it doesn’t change, then we don’t need to really say much, but if it changes, clarification may be done, you know. Once they take off and they go through their thing, after the fact we will do the video,” Gorka said.

Sometimes judges may only need one video to analyze the record attempt, but it is entirely possible they will need to comb through multiple shots and angles of the attempts to reach a consensus. Once this is completed and verified by the judges, all paperwork must be submitted to the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale), a process that takes months. 

It is clear there are a great number of working parts that make something as massive as two back-to-back record attempts possible. Of these moving parts, sponsors and volunteers are incredibly important. We spoke with Michael Fuentes from the army’s volunteer tent, who explained what the army was doing for the event.

“The army itself has a couple members from the Golden Knights, the parachute team that are going to be participating in the 250-way formation. We are a local recruiting office out of Aurora, and I jump here recreationally as well,” said Fuentes. “So, we volunteered our time to come out and try [to] assist in any way possible right now. They have us picking up any jumpers who might land off or any other incidents that they need people to run for, and then just any other support and odds and ends that come up.”

From August 16 to 22, jumpers at Skydive Chicago will be making record attempts, should the weather stay favorable. For updates on Dueling 200-Ways and all things skydiving, visit the Skydive Chicago Facebook page.

This week, every hour, on the hour, Skydive Chicago will be going LIVE on their YouTube page for updates on the record attempts, skydiving tidbits, and fun facts. You can also visit Skydive Chicago’s website or their Dueling 200-Ways page for more information. 

Finally, we would like to give a special thanks and shoutout to Melissa, Tamara, Gorka, Michael, and everyone at Skydive Chicago who are making this possible.