Temecula resident Justin Judd won the gold medal in the advanced distance event Friday at the 2013 U.S. Parachute Association National Skydiving Championships of Canopy Piloting at Skydive City Zephyrhills in Florida.
Judd was one of nearly 80 of the country’s finest, fastest, most fearless skydivers who flocked to the Sunshine State to push their aerial skills to the limit and compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in canopy piloting.
In canopy piloting, often called “swooping,” skydivers fly high-performance parachutes that can generate high vertical and horizontal speeds. By performing speed-inducing maneuvers, these very experienced skydivers can glide inches above the ground for hundreds of yards at speeds approaching 90 mph.
The canopy piloting championships include competitions in speed, in which pilots try to fly as quickly as possible through a course; distance, which involves flying as far as possible across the ground; and accuracy, in which canopy pilots must stop on an exact spot for maximum points.
Judd, 24, trains at Skydive Elsinore and has completed more than 2,000 skydives. When he’s not jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, he works as a project manager for the City of Poway and spends time with his wife and one-year-old son.
Later this year, nearly 500 of the country’s top skydivers will head to the 2013 United States Parachute Association (USPA) National Skydiving Championships, the biggest and most thrilling skydiving competition in the country. The event will take place Sept. 12-24 at Skydive Chicago, an expansive skydiving resort in Ottawa, about an hour west of Chicago. These championships are also free and open to the public.
-News release from the United States Parachute Association
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