How This Girl Takes Indoor Skydiving to the Next Level

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[Narrator] This is Sydney Kennett.

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She's flying on a jet of air traveling

at over 100 miles per hour.

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She's one of the world's best indoor skydivers,

and she's only 14.

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[Sydney] It kind of feels like the matrix.

I'm pretty much defying gravity.

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[Narrator] Sydney holds numerous top prizes

at competitions all around the world.

She's been the US Junior National Champion,

three years in a row, and she holds a Guinness World Record.

[Sydney] The World Record I have,

is the most box slit spins

in a minute in that wind tunnel, I got 68 in total.

I was a little dizzy cause it was

for a whole minute straight,

but usually I don't really get dizzy in there.

[Narrator] For Sydney, taking skydiving outside

of the tunnel, doesn't appeal as much as you might think.

[Sydney] I might wanna skydive when I'm older,

it's five years away, so I might change my mind.

I'm also kind of scared of heights.

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[Man] At Wright Field, at the headquarters

of the Air Materiel Command,

aeronautical engineers are working

on problems of research and development.

[Narrator] This is one

of the first wind tunnels built in 1945.

It's also where Aircraft Machinist and Skydiver,

Jack Tiffany, became the first person

to fly in a wind tunnel.

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Early wind tunnels built

for human flight featured the fan below the skydiver.

In 1997, the fans were moved above

and the chamber was enclosed.

This is known as an Open Flow System.

But it wasn't until 2005, that the modern wind tunnels

like this one were born.

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This building houses a recirculating system

that is key to the modern vertical wind tunnel.

There are four giant fans at the top of the chamber,

12 feet in diameter that pull the air up.

The air is recirculated back down these two shafts

and then back up again.

This allows for turbulent free controllable wind.

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Many say the sensation is very similar to the real thing.

[Sydney] If you move your arm a little bit,

you'll like turn or go to the side,

and if you like straighten your legs

and arms at the same time, you'll go up,

and if you like bend them, you'll go down.

[Narrator] The wind speeds can be cranked up

to 185 miles an hour.

Everyone has their own unique wind speed that they fly at.

What my main wind speed is around like a 110, 115 maybe,

but I can fly up to like the highest speeds

in almost all the tunnels.

[Narrator] Higher wind speeds allow you

to make quicker moves,

but don't expect to start out at this level.

You have to make pretty small body movements,

because the higher wind speed affects it more.

Wind speeds also, they can be affected

by what you're wearing.

So, if you're wearing a bag of your suit,

you'll be at a lower wind speed cause there's more drag.

But if you're wearing a tighter suit,

which most free stylists do,

you're usually at a higher speed.

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[Narrator] There are four basic body positions

in indoor skydiving.

[Sydney] The first one, you're pretty much laying

on your belly.

You have your arms spread out and your legs spread up.

The instructor will tell you to like bend your legs

or straighten your legs to move you.

And you can also turn you, like use your hands to terrain,

and also use your feet to turn.

And they don't have to be big movements at all.

Small movements go a long way.

The second one you would learn is back flying.

So, you're kind of sitting in a chair, but on your back.

You can use your feet to turn your hands to turn.

You can go flat to go up and scrunch up to go down.

The third would be sit, which is,

you're sitting in a chair and you have your arms

at like a 90 degree angle,

and you can straighten your legs to go back

and bend them to go forward.

And the last one that you would learn, would be head down.

You can use your head to turn this time

and your arms and legs to turn again.

And then you can straighten your legs to go up

and bend them to go down.

That one took me the longest to learn.

It's really hard because everything's upside down,

which is kind of difficult

to know where you are in the tunnel.

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[Narrator] Sydney competes in a number

of different categories, such as freestyle,

where competitors create their own routines.

Other categories include formation skydiving,

a more traditional approach to the sport

and dynamic, where teams of two

or even four skydivers are judged

of specific sequences that they must perform.

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[Sydney] With freestyle, every move

in your routine counts,

from that second you enter the door.

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I try to do as many hard and difficult tricks in my routine

as I can, while keeping it pretty smooth and graceful.

[Narrator] Sydney has big goals.

She hopes the sport will soon qualify for the Olympics,

so she can compete for a gold medal.

But it hasn't yet caught on outside of a niche community.

[Sydney] Some of the challenges are like trying

to explain to people that it's actually a sport

cause all the people think is just

like a fun amusement ride,

but they don't really realize that it takes a lot

to be an indoor skydiver.

The first time I started flying was

when I was four years old.

Yeah, buddy.

[Sydney] I was super nervous.

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[Narrator] Sydney took classes when she first started,

but she quickly outgrew them as her skills progressed.

[Sydney] It's just like set me up

for my main body positions and stuff,

and I started training on my own.

[Narrator] Sydney doesn't have her own coach,

so her parents help when they can.

[Sydney] I haven't had a coach in a long time.

A lot of people have like access to really nice coaches.

So, pretty much my coaches are me, my mom and my dad.

My mom and like me talk a lot in like sign language

or weird like signs, about like what's working

and what's not working in my routines.

[Narrator] She finds unique ways to train outside

of the tunnel, so she can stay at the top of her game.

[Sydney] Outside I do a lot of stretching

and trampolining and contortion.

[Narrator] She uses her training to create new tricks.

Like this one, she calls the scorpion.

[Sydney] One of the contortion moves that I learned was,

where you can touch your feet to your head.

So, I was like, maybe I can do this in the tunnel,

maybe I'll just try it.

I remember trying it and trying it and trying it,

and like one of the last rotations I had,

I finally just like tapped my head, and I was like,

Oh yeah, this is amazing.

[Announcer] Classic Sydney score been moved.

[Sydney] In 2018 for nationals,

I got into the last round and I was just like,

you know what?

I'll just do a scorpion, maybe I'll win.

So, I got first for best trick off of that,

which is pretty cool.

[Narrator] Sydney trains hard.

Two times a week, she goes to the tunnel after school

and applies her gymnastic work to her flying.

[Sydney] So, like it's pretty long days,

cause then I also have to do homework

and like wanna talk to my friends sometimes and stuff.

My most memorable moment.

My first competition, even though I wasn't very good.

I knew like I wanna do this.

This is what I wanna do for a long, long time.

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