Langar based team Chimera win gold at British Indoor Skydiving Championships

A team of skydivers is celebrating winning the title of British Indoor Skydiving Champions.

Based at Skydive Langar, Chimera is a team of skydivers from the Vale of Belvoir area, who are now the highest ranked indoor skydiving team in the country.

Thanks to the win, the team will be invited to represent Team GB at the upcoming World Cup of Indoor Skydiving, which will be held in Belgium this April.

Laura Hampton, of Bingham, Will Cooke, of Langar, Sarah Ashworth and James Woods, both of Harby, have been competing together for the past seven years.

Whilst travel restrictions in recent years have impacted the team’s training plans and reduced the amount of time they have been able to spend with their coach, Niklas Hemlin, who lives in the USA, the team had an impressive performance at the competition and beat the reigning British champions.

The British Indoor Skydiving Championships were hosted at iFly in Basingtoke, where more than 50 teams and individuals gathered to compete.

Laura, who has the position of outside centre, said: "Winning the gold medal was really a dream come true! Ours is a sport that requires a huge amount of dedication and we’ve all been working hard to improve our own skills and our skills as a team for years.

"To be able to say we’re the British champions is amazing."

Chimera trains regularly at Skydive Langar, which sponsors Chimera, where last year more than 33,000 skydives were completed.

Josh Carratt, operations manager of Skydive Langar, said: "We’re very proud of Chimera and so pleased to see their hard work pay off in this way."

He continued: "As well as training at Langar, the team also provides coaching to jumpers, from those learning formation skydiving skills from scratch, to other teams, to larger skydiving groups.

"We’ve got an exciting calendar of events lined up for 2022 and it’s awesome that some of those are being led by the British champions."

To find out more about Skydive Langar, visit: https://www.skydivelangar.co.uk/