British Skydiving Nationals Cancelled

Although we cannot currently provide a firm date as to when we’ll be jumping again, British Skydiving has set up a working group with representatives from the PTOs to look at the safe return to Skydiving and are meeting regularly. At this point it is fair to assume that some DZs may be in a position to open earlier than others depending on a variety of factors. We have a virtual meeting scheduled for this evening so we will hopefully be in a position to provide further clarity in the coming days.

The events being cancelled in September does not mean we won\’t be jumping by then. It is a reflection of our concerns about being able to run safe, successful competitions at a time when the competitors will be uncurrent (particularly a concern in some disciplines such as WS and CP) and PTOs will want to focus on getting their operations back off the ground and making money again.

The British Skydiving National Championships require a lot of organisation and coordination in advance, with British Skydiving providing judges, much of the equipment (where applicable, such as Accuracy) and medals. Right now, with some judges coming from abroad but not able to travel, issues with hiring and buying equipment, and the inability to buy new medals, we cannot guarantee we’ll be able to run the competitions properly.

With the first competition less than 6 weeks away, we wanted to make an advance decision to stand-down the judges reducing wasted costs, allow the PTOs to refocus their efforts on getting their operations back off the ground, while giving everyone involved as much notice as possible of the cancellation.

Skydive Hibaldstow are well setup to be able to still run their event, assuming skydiving has restarted, but by it being their own event they can be more flexible to reschedule or adjust should the situation change (such as a second Covid-19 wave leading to another lockdown). It also significantly reduces costs for British Skydiving at a time where our income has dropped to zero and we are spending our reserves supporting PTOs and keeping the organisation afloat – it was expected to cost British Skydiving £15k-£20k in judging and equipment costs this year.

We cannot speak for the PTOs but neither SkydiveBuzz – Dunkeswell nor Skydive Northwest have expressed an interest to British Skydiving to run their own event, and both were in agreement with us about cancelling the Nationals events they were hosting. Members are, however, advised to keep an eye on the social media pages of their local DZ to see if any events are planned once skydiving commences.

We previously made a decision and announced that the teams selected for the original Mondial 2020 will be carried forward for the postponed event in 2021. Therefore, if the Nationals had gone ahead, they would not have been selection events. Note the original World Cup Events in 2021 have also been postponed, therefore there are no new events requiring selection for next year.

The events have been cancelled rather than postponed. We made a conscious decision to do this and will invite new bids for the competitions in 2021 once we have a clear picture of the skydiving landscape going forwards, and know how the events could be run safely.