Falling Free

It was a meeting of the steel-nerved, a championship of far-out, far-up sport, and the finest things about it were hidden by clouds and distance. For spectators at Orange, Mass., last week, the World Sport Parachuting Championships held bleak rewards: the sight of countless parachutes floating down, enough accidents to add the thrill of danger. But for the chutists, there was the intoxicating sensation of man flying on his own, guiding his long, downward swoop through the atmosphere.

Invisible Stunts. Points are awarded in sport parachuting both for accuracy (trying to hit the exact center of the 328-ft. target area from as high as 1,500 meters) and style, in which sky divers somersault and turn by waggling their outstretched arms. The classic form for a sustained free fall is an ecstatic swan dive, the jumper falling spread-eagled and belly down, his back deeply arched. A roll of the head, a dip of the hands, a hunch of the shoulders--any movement will alter his fall. The body acts as a primitive airfoil and expert sky divers use it to control the speed and direction of their plunge. Officials lying flat on their backs study and judge the falling forms through binoculars, but to most spectators the jumpers become visible only when their chutes open.

The championships--sixth in world competition, and first to be held in the U.S.--drifted through three weeks of score-tallying before individual victors could be determined: 23-year-old ex-Paratrooper Jim Arender of Tulsa, Okla., for the men; Mrs. Muriel Simbro of Van Nuys, Calif., for the women. The former champions were both Czechs. The U.S. women's team was a surprise winner of the women's team accuracy event, and the men's team, which finished a dismal fourth last time, was second only to Czechoslovakia. 6.440 points to 6,390. Russia finished third.

Angry Jumpers. For the contestants, there were frustrations as well as rewards. After living on soup and sandwiches and sleeping on army cots for three weeks, the sky divers were in no mood for philosophic acceptance of Operation Sky Shield, which grounded all civilian aircraft for five hours on the championship's last day of jumping, cutting the last events finals in half. The Russians led an Iron Curtain bloc that argued in favor of using the foreshortened time for individual jumping, instead of the shorter team accuracy event that U.S. contestants were counting on to raise their overall point standing. Officials ruled for the Russians on grounds that team accuracy had never been considered an official part of past championships. Angry U.S. jumpers delayed things until the meet was declared ended, with the Czechs victors, then went home mad.

But they could not dull the delight of at least one jumper, Yugoslavia's Milan Knor, 23, who climaxed his part of the competition by asking for political asylum in the U.S. As for his showing in the championships (26th in 97), Knor might have explained to his departing teammates that it was not so bad. considering that he joined the team merely to get out of Communist Yugoslavia.

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