Praia da Luz resident and mother of two Julia Swallow, has just become the British national champion in the four-way formation skydiving competition. Julia has been competing for 30 years, has over 9,500 skydives and came out of retirement to win the British Nationals for the tenth time.
Julia won her first British Nationals with a female team in 2006, and then the World Championships, before forming a mixed skydive team called Satori. They won bronze at the World Cup Series in 2012 and have gone on to win the British Nationals every year since 2009, apart from 2014, when Julia was pregnant. When her daughter was five months old, she came back and won the four-way and eight-way British championships. Julia is also the female world record holder for the highest number of points in a competition and holds another world record for completing two formations with 121 skydivers!
Enjoying the ‘quiet’ life in the Algarve, Julia had decided to retire and had been out of competition for the last four years when she was persuaded back into the mixed competition. Her team trained at Skydive Algarve and Skydive Spain completing 80 training jumps and three hours in a wind tunnel.
The competition took place at Skydive Hibaldstow in Lincolnshire, England. Julia’s team competed in the mixed category, where they entered the competition as the underdogs. The teams exit the aircraft at 10,500 feet, giving them enough time to complete 35 seconds of formations. The competition takes place over 10 rounds (jumps). Each of those rounds has a set sequence of formations to complete. A team scores a point per completed formation and the team with the most number of points wins. Each jump is videoed by a camera person who flies above the team and the video is then handed to a panel of judges on the ground. At 4,500 feet, the competitors have an alarm in their ear at which point they track away from each other and open their parachutes.
Julia has the support of her husband and pilot, James, who flew the plane for her team. “He really helps us as he is an extremely consistent and talented pilot. When we exit the plane, it’s important that the aircraft is flown at a speed that will aid us to have a successful launch as we are all linked together.”
Julia started skydiving when she was 16. “I watched my brother do his first jump when I was 13. I vividly remember the smile on his face when he hit the ground and I wanted that feeling. He bought me a static line jump for my 16th birthday. I got such a buzz from the experience and I wanted that sense of achievement again and again.”
She laughs that while she has achieved so much competitive success, the thing that always impresses people more is that she was Halle Berry’s stunt double in Die Another Day. “I was dressed up in a wig and fake boobs, with a selection of knives in my belt. We filmed the scene in South Korea when Jinx (Berry) and Bond (Pierce Brosnan) jumped out of a helicopter behind enemy lines. I had to free-fall past a helicopter that contained all the cameramen in terrible visibility, so it was a challenge!”
So, Julia will keep competing now that she has regained the taste of victory? “Never say never again,” she quips!
