Academy › Learn from the best
Learn from the best
What champions and coaches say, how to gain experience with and without jumping, the best videos and how competition works.
Practise every drill high and only with your coach and S&TA's agreement. Nothing here is a turn height, a technique to try near the ground, or permission to progress. There is no requirement for any skydiver to swoop.
What champions and top coaches say
Paraphrased from interviews and articles — follow the links for the full text.
Curt Bartholomew
Canopy Piloting World Champion (overall, 2024); co-founder of The Alter Ego Project
- The skill that fades first when you're not current is your sight picture — knowing where the turn has to finish. Rebuild it slowly.
- On a high pull: practise the turn you normally fly, practise stopping (arresting) the dive on toggles, and use rear risers to plane out after the turn — up high.
- Plan patterns on a map with the day's wind before you even get to the drop zone.
Tommy Botten Jensen
Norwegian canopy coach and competitor
- 'Walk the turns' at home: watch your landing video and walk the turn, feeling the harness and risers in your body.
- After a break, treat your canopy as new: high pull, both-toggle abort, rear-riser stalls, clean turn mechanics — especially the stop.
- Start with the landing you are most comfortable with. There is always a next swoop — know when to abort.
Paul Dorward
Flight-1 instructor, 11,000+ jumps
- Slow down: learn to fly slowly (half and deep brakes) before you learn to fly fast.
- Use audible and visual altimeters, write down up to three things per jump, and pre-plan every flight on a map.
- Understand wing loading, learn to recognise 'red mist', learn to say NO — and always have a reputable coach.
Cornelia Mihai
world-level canopy pilot, JYRO athlete
- On a new wing, do hop-and-pops or high pulls to learn how fronts, rears, harness and toggles change speed, stability and height loss.
- The first skill that fades without currency is judging how fast you're moving across the ground, towards it and towards other canopies.
- Enter competitions only when you're consistent enough to fly a course on every jump — and remember it's the pilot, not the canopy.
Olga Naumova
competition canopy pilot, JYRO athlete
- If you can, borrow a high-performance wing the same size as your current one — never downsize and change canopy type in one step.
- Practise each new manoeuvre up high until you're proficient; rolling out higher on your first landings is fine.
- Be ready to give up a run when things don't feel right — even in competition.
Gain experience without jumping
Walk the turns
Watch your landing video at home and walk the turn, feeling harness and riser pressure in your body.
Source: Skydive Langar — A Safe Return to Swooping (Curt Bartholomew & Tommy Botten Jensen) ↗Plan patterns on a map
Use satellite maps and the day's wind to plan entry points before you reach the drop zone. The Wind & glide lab shows how wind changes the ground track.
Source: Skydive Langar — A Safe Return to Swooping (Curt Bartholomew & Tommy Botten Jensen) ↗Study your own data
Review your FlySight tracks here — per-90° height use, recovery and consistency — and write down what changed.
Source: Skydivemag — Canopy Piloting: 8 Principles (Paul Dorward, Flight-1) ↗Practise PLFs
Rolling in the grass costs nothing and saves ankles on the day it goes wrong.
Source: JYRO / USPA Parachutist — 25 Ways to Become a Better Canopy Pilot (Alan Martinez) ↗Take a course, even online
Structured courses teach the progression in order.
Source: Flight-1 canopy courses ↗Learn the theory
Wing loading, planform, recovery arc and the flare — read the cheat sheets and manufacturer guidance.
Source: USPA SIM 5-9 — Canopy Piloting ↗Make every jump count
- Dedicated canopy jumps: high pulls and hop-and-pops where the canopy is the whole skydive. Source: Skydivemag — Canopy Piloting: 8 Principles (Paul Dorward, Flight-1) ↗
- Record up to three things per jump — what you did and how much height it took — in your logbook, and tag the phases on your jump here. Source: Skydivemag — Canopy Piloting: 8 Principles (Paul Dorward, Flight-1) ↗
- Video every landing and review it with a coach. Source: JYRO / USPA Parachutist — 25 Ways to Become a Better Canopy Pilot (Alan Martinez) ↗
- Get a coach — the best coach, not necessarily the best pilot. Share a jump with them from the Community page. Source: JYRO / USPA Parachutist — 25 Ways to Become a Better Canopy Pilot (Alan Martinez) ↗
Watch and learn
What to look for in each — trained pilots, years of coached progression and controlled conditions.
2024 World Championships of Canopy Piloting
Frickflyers
What to watch for: Watch the set-ups before the course and how the wings are flown through the gates — then read the rules video below.
How canopy piloting competitions work (rules explained)
Frickflyers
What to watch for: Speed, distance, zone accuracy and the gates — so competition footage makes sense.
Canopy Piloting course intro — Curt & Jeannie Bartholomew
Krav
What to watch for: How two world-class pilots structure learning: fundamentals first, then turns.
Flight-1 canopy course at Skydive Dubai
Skydive Dubai
What to watch for: What a structured canopy course looks like — ground school, drills, video debrief.
Canopy piloting exercises
What to watch for: Drills coaches use up high to build canopy feel.
Carved speed course
What to watch for: Competition swooping through a curved course — notice how continuous and smooth the inputs look.
This is swooping
What to watch for: What trained high-performance landings look like — the result of years of coached progression.
Competition canopy piloting
Swooping as a sport: pilots fly a course over a pond and are scored on speed, distance, accuracy or style — under the FAI rules.
- 2024 World Championships (Pretoria): Curt Bartholomew (USA) overall world champion; Justin Price won freestyle; the UAE were nation champions. Source: FAI — 2024 World Canopy Piloting Championships, Pretoria ↗
- 2025 FAI World Cup (Eloy): Armando Fattoruso (ITA) won Accuracy; Cedric Veiga Rios (FRA) won Distance and Speed. Source: Skydive Arizona — 2025 FAI World Cup of Canopy Piloting results ↗
| Event | Objective | Measured | Notable rules |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carved speed 70 m | Fly G1 → G5 through the curved course as fast as possible, staying inside the boundaries. | Time in seconds to 1/1000 (lower is better) | Out-flying a gate or passing above it (vertical extension) and touching the ground before G5 cost the run. |
| Drag distance 50 m | Drag the water at or before G1, pass G1 and G5 (50 m), then fly as far as possible and land inside the course. | Metres, measured to the touch point nearest G1 | Landing between G1 and G5 scores 35 m; landing at G5 scores 50 m. |
| Zone accuracy | Enter through G1, drag the water through as many of the 4 water gates as possible, then land in a scoring zone. | Water-gate points + landing-zone points | Points need at least one water gate AND one zone; not landing on your feet costs 10 points; a water landing after G1 scores the default result. |
| Freestyle | Its own event: style and difficulty on the water — contact with the water with different body positions. | Judged points | Entry is the water surface; missing the water is a missed entry. |
Alternative formats in the rules: drag speed 50 m, max speed 50 m and max distance. Source: FAI — Competition Rules, Canopy Piloting (2022 edition) ↗
How a round becomes points
- Distance and zone accuracy: the top score of the round = 100 points; everyone else gets their score as a percentage of it.
- Speed: each time is raised to the power 1.333, the fastest becomes 100 points, and the others get the inverse percentage — so small time gaps cost more than a straight ratio would.
- Champions: each event's champion has the highest total over its rounds; the overall (combined) champion has the highest total across the events. Source: FAI — Competition Rules, Canopy Piloting (2022 edition) ↗
- Conditions: the rules cap wind at 7 m/s (25 km/h · 16 mph), and 5 m/s (18 km/h · 11 mph) for zone accuracy; competitors exit at 1,200–2,000 m depending on how many are on the load. Source: FAI — Competition Rules, Canopy Piloting (2022 edition) ↗
| Time | time^1.333 | Points | Average speed over 70 m |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.500 s | 3.392 | 100.000 | 101 km/h · 63 mph |
| 2.800 s | 3.945 | 85.979 | 90 km/h · 56 mph |
| 3.200 s | 4.714 | 71.960 | 79 km/h · 49 mph |
Records listed by FAI (as reported on Wikipedia)
- Speed over a 70 m course: 2.404 s — Greg Windmiller (USA), 2012. Distance: 151.95 m — Nick Batsch (USA), 2012. Check the FAI records page for newer entries. Source: Wikipedia — Canopy piloting (FAI records listed there) ↗
Watch
2018 FAI World Canopy Piloting Championships, Poland
FAI Air Sports Channel
What to watch for: speed, distance and accuracy rounds over the pond, and how gates are scored.
Canopy pilots swooping at The World Games 2022
SkydiveUSPA
What to watch for: the set-up before the course and how smooth the carve is.
Curt Bartholomew — 2023 USPA National Canopy Piloting Championships
SkydiveUSPA
What to watch for: a world champion's run through the course.
Canopy Freestyle National Championships
SkydiveUSPA
What to watch for: the freestyle event: body positions on the water.
Competition pilots fly with safety crews, water landing areas and dedicated airspace. Competition technique is not a template for a drop-zone landing area.
Sources
- JYRO / USPA Parachutist — 25 Ways to Become a Better Canopy Pilot (Alan Martinez)
- Skydivemag — Canopy Piloting: 8 Principles (Paul Dorward, Flight-1)
- Skydive Langar — A Safe Return to Swooping (Curt Bartholomew & Tommy Botten Jensen)
- USPA — Introduction to Canopy Piloting Conditioning (Dr. Nancy Grieger & Christian Cody)
- USPA — Warm-Ups for Canopy Pilots (exercises shared by Justin Price)
- JYRO — How to Become a High Performance Canopy Pilot (Cornelia Mihai & Olga Naumova)
- USPA SIM 5-9 — Canopy Piloting
- FAI — 2024 World Canopy Piloting Championships, Pretoria
- Skydive Arizona — 2025 FAI World Cup of Canopy Piloting results
- Flight-1 canopy courses
- Krav — Canopy Piloting course with Curt & Jeannie Bartholomew
- USPA Parachutist / AXIS Flight School — Foundations of Flight: Rear-Riser Stall (Niklas Daniel, Nov 2012)
- Skydivemag — Landing on Rear Risers
- Skydivemag — Flare Technique and Airspeed (Julian Barthel)
- Skydive Perris — Skydiving Landing: How It Works
- FAI — Competition Rules, Canopy Piloting (2022 edition)
- FAI — Canopy Piloting
- Wikipedia — Canopy piloting (FAI records listed there)
Safety notice: This tool is for data review only. It does not replace canopy coaching, DZ rules, traffic awareness, S&TA guidance, or manufacturer guidance. Everything here is information for learning — not advice or a recommendation about any canopy, wing loading, turn or decision. Your decisions are your own. See the Terms of Service.