If there's one thing you can wake up Fanny Hopmans for, it's skydiving! “I am now a member of the national women's team and hold the NL women's record and the EU women's record!”
She made her first jump on her 23 e , but since she was 3 years old, she became fascinated by this sport. “In the past Skydive ENPC jumped about above my house, they had their landing field a kilometer away. As a 3 year old girl I found it very interesting. But it wasn't until I was 23 that I made my first jump, a static line. Static line skydiving is a form of training in which the parachute opens automatically. You must know the procedures well and adopt a good dismounting position. After that you can be trained further to go free-falling.”
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The first time was a bit of a disappointment. “It went really fast and when I hung under the parachute, I thought:'is this it?' Then it became really fun, because you get more involved in what you do.”
But it doesn't always go well. “I once had a 'reserve'. That means I couldn't control the main parachute properly and I opened the second parachute." Fortunately, that ended with a sizzle.
Now Fanny is on the national women's skydiving team. “We are four ladies and fly in the highest class within the formation jumping. We aim to get the best out of ourselves. We are not the youngest team, but we have a lot of experience and we all have busy jobs. This sometimes presents challenges in planning. We train on average once every three weeks in a wind tunnel such as City Skydive in Utrecht or Indoor Skydive in Roosendaal. Once a year we plan a training internship of 2-3 days to fly more and improve more in a short time. We hope to go to Slovakia in 2021 for the World Cup. Unfortunately, this is still uncertain due to the coronavirus.”
Let's hope that will work, because let's face it:this looks spectacular, doesn't it?
Do you also want to tell more about your favorite sport, mail to [email protected] and maybe you'll be on the site soon!
Image:own image, Raul Heys, Henny Wiggers
