Catching up with Jarno Cordia

Hi Jarno, how are you doing and are you enjoing our dropzone?

Life is good! We just got back from a super week of training at Skydive Spain for the world championships and we are flying to Seville again in 1,5 week for more.
I love the dropzone, and I love the weather!

How many hours do you dedicate to training, on average, per day?

On the average training day we tend to do 5 to 6 jumps. Though its of course possible to do more, the full focus and ability to process and learn from what you are doing seems to have a limit. Doing more jumps a day, you tend to learn less, and also get affected by tiredness more. Making jumps less effective. But at the moment, the world is slowly becoming the happy place we were used to before all that started! When we’re not flying, I still tend to be busy a lot with our training. Analyzing video, thinking about certain figures, and how to approach them in a way where we fly it just a bit smoother, and thus faster.

How do you think you contribute to hers?

I think we both work off eachother in the same way. And in all our progression, there is never one person clearly better than the other.
We do both have our individual strengths, but those just help drive the other ones performance up to the same level. Always learning!

What step would you advice people to take who are thinking about going from WS fun jumping to WS competitions?

Regardless if its actual competition, or just practicing the various figures and making up cool free rounds.
Flying with a steady partner, and doing dedicated training will drive your skills up to a higher level, and make you progress beyond what you can achieve with regular funjumping. Having goals in flying, it really helps motivate you, and also creates a much clearer path with regards to things you can practice and train for.

What competition do you remember the most and for what reason?

We’ve had many wingsuit competitions both indoor and outdoors. And all of them are equally rewarding.
But so far the most memorable event was Ravenna, as the international stage tends to have the most fierce competitors, sharing the same drive and goals.
Being able to come out on top, in such a playing field, that is what you’re training for all year. In the end, its funny enough not the prize or podium that’s our personal aim. Even if we’d come 4th or 5th, we would be happy knowing another team trained harder and accomplished more, as long as we did all we could and we showed the best flying we have in us. The medals are not a thing you tend to look at too often, but the video from various competitions, showing our level of flying at that point, and how from competition to competition it is taking steps up and forward every single time. That’s the true reward!