History
In 1980, some California skydivers tried something they called "air surfing," lying flat on surfboards during free fall. But that was a short-lived experiment.
Skysurfing really began in France seven years later, when JoËl Cruciani stood on a surfboard while in free fall for a film. In 1988, Laurent Bouquet strapped a smaller, skateboard-sized surfboard to his feet for a jump. Patrick de Gayardon tried the same thing and then invented a binding with a cutaway feature so the board could be released in an emergency.
De Gayardon and Wendy Smith of New Zealand performed the first tandem skysurf in 1990 for a segment on a French sports anthology film. Bruno Gouvy and de Gayardon also did the first double skysurf for a Japanese TV commercial.
Skysurfing was introduced to the United States in a 1991 Reebok commercial featuring de Gayardon, Didier La Fond, and Patrick Passe. Later that year, Coca-Cola did a skysurfing commercial with Ray Palmer of Australia.
In the meantime, skydiver and television director Pete McKeeman developed the team video sports concept for freestyle skydiving, in which one skydiver does acrobatic stunts during free fall and a second tapes the performance. Judges then view the videotape and score the team, both on the performance itself and on the videography.
The same concept was applied to skysurfing during a competitive demonstration at the 1992 world freestyle championships. Also in 1992, Jeremy Loftis, America's first skysurfer, founded the Surflite company to manufacture the first skyboards, using graphite-Kevlar composites and lightweight honeycomb aluminum.
The first skysurfing competition was held in April 1993 at Eloy, Arizona. Other competitions were staged in California and Illinois that year and the sport's first world championship took place in conjunction with the fourth world freestyle championship competition in Spain.
Skysurfing received major exposure when a four-man demonstration was featured in the opening ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympics. The sport became even better known when it was included in the inaugural ESPN Extreme Games in 1995, with $20,000 in prizes.
McKeeman that year founded Skysports International, later SkySportif International (SSI), as an organizing and sanctioning body for professional skysurfing and established a pro tour leading up to the 1996 X Games. In 1999, the sport was added as an event in the world skydiving championships staged by the F&#eacute;d&#eacute;ration A&#eacute;ronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for air sports.
In 2001, the X Games dropped skysurfing. Shortly afterward, SSI folded, since its major competitions had been qualifying and promotional events for the X Games. That leaves skysurfing as a discipline of sport parachuting, generally under the control of the national governing bodies for parachuting competition.
