Indoor flyers strike gold

Skydivers secured two gold medals after racing against the clock to complete as many formations as possible in just 35 seconds at the Australian Open Indoor Skydiving Championships.

The national competition, held at iFLY Penrith from August 14 to 16, brought together teams from across Australia, with six ADF personnel competing in four-way formation skydiving.

Four-way formation skydiving is divided into Rookie, A, AA and AAA categories, with each level increasing in difficulty and introducing more complex formations.

Army SGT Luke Burton, who gained his civilian skydiving licence four years ago and later turned to indoor skydiving to sharpen his skills between outdoor jumps, secured one of the two gold medals. He won the four-way formation skydiving A category with his Victorian team. This occurred after only a year of the team competing together.

“We went from a team that had not competed together to later being at the top of that category. It was an unreal feeling,” SGT Burton said.

Teams began each round by building a star formation, with the clock starting as soon as the formation broke. Competitors then raced through a sequence of formations, earning points for each successfully completed formation. About one minute in the indoor tunnel was equivalent to the freefall time of one outdoor jump, allowing competitors to accelerate their training.

FLTLT Ariel White also struck gold, winning the four-way AA category with her South Australian team, Jam Donut.

She began skydiving while undertaking her pilot’s course in 2015 and has since competed with the ADF Parachuting Association.

With no indoor skydiving tunnel in Adelaide, FLTLT White and her teammates travelled to Sydney and Melbourne for training camps in preparation for the championships.

“After the first one, I just fell in love with it,” she said.

She said the team faced a close contest against rival team Phantom.

“We were both pushing each other to achieve better,” FLTLT White said.

“It was really good to see the results of that training come through in the competition.”

AB James Barclay had a different experience, competing in an all-ADF team in the No Exit Required rookie category.

After a bad landing put him off skydiving in 2025, AB Barclay returned to the sport this year, gained his certificate and competed at his first ADF sporting event.

“The highlight was meeting my team for the first time,” he said.

“We were kind of thrown together and just learned how to jump with each other on the day.”

Despite being new to four-way formation skydiving, he said the people involved kept drawing him back to the sport.

“There’s so many amazing people within the sport and there’s so much you can do within skydiving,” AB Barclay said.

ADF Parachuting Association members will next compete at state championships around Australia before the ADF Military Nationals in December.