Skydiver and base jumper, Valery Rozov, talks about his passion for flight and his journey to a world record By David Stephens Born in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, Valery Rozov long ago made a home for himself among the clouds. Since taking to the skies in 1993, the 47-year-old adventure junkie has become one of [...]

The Sundaytimes Sri Lanka

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Skydiver and base jumper, Valery Rozov, talks about his passion for flight and his journey to a world record

By David Stephens

Born in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, Valery Rozov long ago made a home for himself among the clouds. Since taking to the skies in 1993, the 47-year-old adventure junkie has become one of the most recognizable faces in skydiving and base jumping, and in the process has set a world record with over 10,000 jumps.

Valery Rozov while he was in Sri Lanka. - Pic by Hasitha Kulasekera.

His entry into skydiving and then base jumping was part of a natural progression, which began when he was a child.
“When I was very small I started rock climbing and mountaineering. Only after that, at the age of 25, did I start sky diving. I competed a lot of years as a sky diver and once I stopped I moved into base jumping,” Valery explained.

The veteran aerial maestro, who was in Sri Lanka on a three-day promotional tour a few weeks ago, suggested that even though he had planned and executed numerous jumps, he still experienced a combination of exhilaration and tension every time he prepared to take the plunge into nothingness.

“All jumps are very difficult. The conditions of the jumps are usually unpredictable so this means that before every jump you are nervous. Even though I have done thousands of jumps I get scared a little bit. But it’s exciting because it’s a real adventure and it’s always different.”
His journeys through his two chosen aerial art forms have led him to vastly different destinations. In skydiving, which unlike base jumping holds a position as a legitimate sport, Valery established himself as a renowned competitor, notching up a raft of accolades including two World Championships in 1999 and 2003, the European Championship in 2002 and the X- Games Skysurfing Championship in 1998.
However, his passion for base jumping, although not yielding a bounty of titles or prestige, satisfies his insatiable pioneering spirit which roams restlessly within him.

Describing it as “an extreme activity”, Valery says that since base jumping possesses no official competition or rules, it is a wild field where the potential for adrenaline-laced euphoria is limitless.
This lust for excitement though has come at no small price, a fact demonstrated by the scars on Valery’s body. Injuries to his head, legs and hands are all routine consequences in an activity which involves him launching himself off a precipice thousands of feet above the ground. However this does little to diminish his love for it.

“It’s a high risk activity and if you compete in it for a long time sometimes things happen,” he reasons.

Nevertheless, Valery does not leave the outcome of his jumps entirely to chance, and spends time between base jumping excursions grilling his body with a rigorous training regimen.

“All year around I just train and train, but for big jumps you need to spend time getting acclimatized to the altitude,” Valery reveals, adding that oftentimes it takes days for him and his team to scale the mountains he leaps from.
“My main training message would be just jump a lot. The more you jump the better you get at it.”

Valery has made jumps on all the world’s continents including Antarctica, and in April he plans to leap off a mountain summit in the Himalayas, a range which has previously both challenged and thrilled him.

And with several more of the world’s peaks to soar from, it is pretty clear that Russia’s human flying machine has plenty more air time before he hangs up his wings.




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