200 jumpers, about 20 tries: Skydive Chicago in Ottawa looks to break its 2015 Vertical World Record

“If you’re in the wrong spot, the record doesn’t happen. We have to be exactly in our spots the way we planned it on the ground and the way we submitted in our plan to the judges.”

—  Amy Chmelecki, one of 200 divers attempting the world record

Skydive Chicago in Ottawa buzzed with excitement Monday morning as divers began their five-day mission to break a record by creating a 200-person pattern in mid-air.

It’s their second attempt since 2018, when poor weather created too many difficulties to overcome. This group is attempting to break the Vertical World Record set at Skydive Chicago in 2015 when 164 people performed a head-down formation during their skydive.

Skydive Chicago CEO Rook Nelson said these dives are as intricate as they are intense, and they require focus on the people in his immediate surroundings.

“As we leave the airplane, we’re just trying to fly as best as we can, nice and calm and predictable,” Nelson said. “You allow people to dock on (each other) and I’m in the very center of it.”

The divers have about four attempts per day over the stretch of Monday to Friday to get the pattern down, which is coordinated ahead of time down to minutes before they take off in the airplanes. The divers practice the pattern in the grass outside the hangar near the spectator’s area.

Amy Chmelecki said the expectation is the group gets a little better with each jump. The first two attempts on Monday are largely warmup jumps to create reference points for the rest of the attempts.

“There’s a lot of energy on the first jumps,” Chmelecki said. “People are sometimes a little bit too excited. As people calm down, they’ll start to see more and learn their jobs more and just perform better.”

Nelson and Chmelecki both stressed how important spatial awareness is during a jump: It’s 200 people who all have to hold hands and get to specific spots.

“If you’re in the wrong spot, the record doesn’t happen,” Chmelecki said. “We have to be exactly in our spots the way we planned it on the ground and the way we submitted in our plan to the judges.”

The people participating in this world record are all experienced skydivers who competed in camps and tryouts over the last year and a half. Nelson said they’ve jumped between 300 and 10,000 times. He said he jumps as many as 10 times a day, with five to seven skydives in one day being a good day for most sport jumpers.

Chmelecki said she’s skydived about 20,000 times in her lifetime, although she’s more about quality than quantity these days: She said she now skydives about 400 times a year.

“All I do is skydive for a living, so everything I do is skydiving related,” Chmelecki said. “One of the avenues of my hustle is Hollywood stunts when I’m lucky enough to get the call.”

Chmelecki said the work is challenging and different, especially managing expectations of people who don’t know much about skydiving.

Chazi Rutz has jumped more than 8,400 times and she said the one thing she never gets used to is how cold it is at 19,000 feet. It hits zero degrees and divers are all bundled up to go on top of the nerves of jumping.

“It’s just one of those things that you overcome,” Rutz said. “You’re not in your lounge chair at home. You’re on a plane with 22 of your friends and then you’re freezing cold and you have all of these nerves building up while you’re trying to focus. It’s a really cool amount of inputs you have to settle in and find, like find your line of where you have to function mentally to do your job.”

Rutz said everyone has a job to do and even getting to the dives involves a whole lot of engineering. There are slides to pay attention to, formations to memorize and things skydivers have to learn about the plane.

The nerves aren’t as bad for Rutz this time, though.

“I was definitely like, making sure I was eating and drinking and telling myself I was going to be OK,” Rutz said. “The whole ride up your heart is pounding. But now I’ve been around awhile so I’m just like, I feel like I get this blue wave that says ‘Alright.’ We just do what they say and stay calm.”

The skydivers will be attempting to break the record through Friday, Aug. 26, starting at 8 a.m. each day at 3215 E. 1969th Road, Ottawa. There is also a group of reserves attempting a smaller organized dive. Photos and videos are reviewed after each attempt and judges are on-hand.