French skydiving trio the Smashed Patatas have won the freefly world championship in Eloy, Arizona, after eight years of intensive preparation.
Stéphan Garin, Romain Blois, and Jules Imbert took the gold medal for France after outperforming four rival teams across seven rounds of high-altitude competition.
Garin and Blois, both from Toulouse, joined forces with Imbert, an Ariège native, to represent their local club and training base at the Les Pujols aerodrome on the global stage.
The world championship tournament ran from October 20 to October 24 in the United States, concluding with the French team atop the podium ahead of silver medallists from Kyrgyzstan and a German squad in third place.
Ariège is a department nestled in the Pyrenees foothills of southwestern France, just south of Toulouse. The rural airfield at Les Pujols has long served as a hub for regional sport aviation and skydiving, giving the trio an open base to develop their aerial choreography.
Seven competition jumps in Arizona
Five teams entered the freefly category at the world championships, leaving the Smashed Patatas facing a demanding schedule of seven competition jumps from the aircraft.
Blois, speaking as a team freeflyer, explained that the contest consisted of five free rounds and two compulsory sequences. The compulsory sequences featured predefined movements known in advance to every competitor, testing mechanical precision and synchronised timing.
By contrast, the five free rounds were conceived and choreographed entirely by the teams themselves. Blois said the squad delivered a very good performance across all seven jumps and were delighted with how each routine unfolded in the air.
Blois noted that creativity is vital during the free rounds, where teams strive to push the limits of difficulty without ever sacrificing fluidity or harmony of movement.
He said the trio aimed to attempt the most difficult manoeuvres possible because high technical difficulty yields the greatest number of points. However, he stressed that high scores also depend on delivering a performance that feels varied, seamless, and original.
Artistic routine and technical scoring
Freefly is a modern skydiving discipline that emerged in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional belly-to-earth formations. Rather than falling flat against the air, freeflyers orient their bodies along multiple three-dimensional axes.
Athletes in freefly fly head-down, upright in a seated posture, or standing vertically in the slipstream. These vertical orientations dramatically reduce wind resistance, pushing freefall speeds well past 150 miles per hour and requiring exceptional physical control.
Competitive teams typically pair two acrobatic performers with an airborne camera flyer who films the routine from inches away. Judges review the recorded footage from the drop to award points based on technical complexity, execution quality, and visual presentation.
In compulsory rounds, skydivers must complete strict sequences of turns, flips, and grips within a designated working time. In free rounds, competitors have full creative freedom to combine spins, transitions, and dynamic flight lines into an expressive routine.
Training regimen at Les Pujols
The victory in Arizona was the culmination of nearly eight years of training and hundreds of jumps, Blois said. The trio have spent years refining their collective technique and building their competitive momentum.
During the current season alone, the Smashed Patatas completed between 500 and 600 training jumps. Fitting that immense workload into their calendars required careful coordination with their everyday professional responsibilities.
Between April and October, the three skydivers routinely reserved one full week each month for training camps at the Les Pujols aerodrome. These intensive monthly camps allowed them to repeat their routines dozens of times each day.
Blois highlighted that nearly eight years of dedicated teamwork underpinned their consistency in competition. The three athletes gradually built their technical understanding, turning local practice sessions in southwestern France into an internationally competitive routine.
Acclimatisation in the desert
Preparing for a global championship held on another continent required adjustments that went beyond their regular schedule in Ariège. The team chose to fly to Arizona three weeks before the start of the tournament.
Once in the United States, the trio completed an additional 120 training jumps. Blois said the objective was to ramp up jump volume on site, adapt to local conditions, and eliminate the physical disruption of jet lag.
Eloy is situated in the Sonoran Desert between Phoenix and Tucson in Pinal County. The town is globally famous in sport aviation as the home of Skydive Arizona, one of the premier skydiving drop zones in the world.
The warm desert climate and thin dry air in Arizona create distinct aerodynamic conditions that differ markedly from the denser autumn air of southwestern France. Practising directly over the desert drop zone allowed the French flyers to dial in their fall rates and timing.
Aviation careers and future plans
The trio share a deep professional affinity for aviation away from the drop zone. All three members of the Smashed Patatas work in the aeronautics industry, an occupation that mirrors the technical discipline of their skydiving.
Blois works as a pilot instructor at the École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile in Toulouse, where he trains future commercial pilots. His teammates Garin and Imbert both work as aeronautical engineers in the region.
Toulouse is widely recognised as the capital of the European aerospace industry, housing aircraft manufacturers, research centres, and specialised engineering academies. The technical knowledge and procedural precision demanded by their professions directly inform their approach to competitive sports.
The world title marks the peak of a steady international rise for the team. Last year, the Smashed Patatas won both a World Cup and the European Championship, but Blois noted that winning the world championship remained the definitive goal for every squad.
The athletes have not yet decided whether they will return to defend their world crown in two years. For now, the three champions intend to enjoy their gold medal before mapping out their future, though training sessions at the Les Pujols airfield will continue.
