Indoor Skydiving’s Quest to Become an Olympic Sport

The Olympic games may have the mantle of history firmly set on its brow, but the Olympics themselves are an extraordinarily dynamic set of events. Let’s take the 2020 event, for example: not only are some sports totally new (karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing), plenty of existing events are getting a total rulebook face-lift.

The Paris 2024 Organisation Committee is proposing indoor skydiving as an event for the 2024 Olympics, and we couldn’t agree more. We are darned sure that 2024 is indoor skydiving’s year to play monkey bars on the five rings, and we have the facts to prove it!

How does indoor skydiving measure up to the other Olympic sports?

The rules governing the Olympic Games are clear: to be Olympic, a sport must not be elitist and must be widely practiced by a number of people from whom top- (Olympic-!) level athletes will emerge. Interested would-be athletes can visit any of the 100+-and-counting indoor skydiving facilities around the world to get involved and go from newbie to experienced practitioner over a reasonably short period of time. Thanks to the presence of a qualified technical staff and the safety of a variable-controlled environment, progression in indoor skydiving is usually quite rapid — especially amongst the sport’s younger participants.

How young? Hold up three fingers. Yep! Quite different from “outdoor” skydiving, Indoor skydiving is accessible to pretty much anyone from preschool to the senior home. It’s even accessible to the disabled! That said, a keen and focused athlete can progress to the point that physics doesn’t even seem to affect them all that much. At the cutting edge, it looks kinda like physical magic — just like any other top-level Olympic sport, from figure skating to gymnastics to judo.

Is indoor skydiving a truly Olympic-level sport?

This may or may not surprise you, but indoor skydiving is a meticulously well-structured competitive sport at all levels. Competition rules have been in place for many years, governing both national and world-level championships.

It’s not a one-trick pony, either. The greater sport of indoor skydiving covers several specific disciplines, all of which are thrilling to watch and perfectly adaptable to an Olympic format.

Why now? And how is it looking so far?

Making skydiving part of the Olympic family has been a goal for decades. In many ways, France is leading the charge — in great part, because the Fédération Française de Parachutisme has stood in federal support of indoor skydiving since the earliest days of the sport, and because the 2024 Summer Olympics will be held right there in Paris. Parfait! Indeed, it’s not necessary to hail from the land of berets and baguettes to back this up: All practitioners of human flight are united behind them, because the symbolism of having this happen in 2024 (230 years since the first-ever parachute jump) has some seriously special significance.

Here at Paraclete XP, we are wholeheartedly behind the effort to get indoor skydiving recognized as an event in 2024. We’ve been full throttle in promoting more and better competition on the national and international level, and we’re stoked at the thought of a Parisian vacation to cheer on our teams. Naturellement!