Bondi Daredevil On A Wing And A Prayer

By Marcus Braid on June 11, 2014 in

The plane is flying at 250 kilometers an hour, 14,000 feet in the air, and the anxiety is palpable. Nerves frayed, he jumps out only wearing a wingsuit. What follows is four minutes of extreme terror and fun, but it’s just another day at the office for Ash Darby.

“If it goes wrong, you could be hitting the ground in 40 seconds,” Ash said. “If it goes right, it will etch a lifelong memory into my mind of what its like to be a bird or a jet.

“The anxiety builds up for 20 minutes on the flight up; pretty much until you’re going out the door. It is all too fast to control it in a methodical way. It’s where I can convert the fear in my body into sheer joy.”

Ash is one of the premier wingsuit flyers in Australia. The Bondi resident knows what he’s doing up there, but he’s not immune to the danger involved in jumping out of a plane relying solely on a wingsuit.

“The bigger the suit, the harder it is to fly,” Ash said. “About six months ago, I couldn’t keep my suit under control for around 90 seconds. I thought I had about 20 seconds left, so I just relaxed. I was fighting it too much. When I relaxed, everything fell into the right place.”

Ash is deep into preparations for August’s World Wingsuit Championships in the Netherlands, where he’ll contest the acrobatic wingsuit flying event.

“We reckon we’re in the top three or four in the world,” Ash said. “Spain, Russia and the Dutch are our main competition. The Dutch are the reigning champions – they are holding the event because they won it last time.”

The competition consists of seven rounds of acrobatic tricks, such as barrel rolls, front loops, corkscrews and pancake manoeuvres. Two pilots perform the tricks, while the third member films. Ash will compete with Roger Hugelshofer and Ben Futterlieb, the team known as ‘Jet Stream’.

“A top five finish would be great,” Ash said. “I don’t think anyone expects a team from the Southern Hemisphere to fare well.”

Wingsuit flying is often compared with skydiving and BASE jumping. Participants fly through the air using a special jumpsuit, with the suit adding to the surface area of the human body using fabric between the legs and under the arms.

“Wingsuiting is the fastest growing sport in this field in the world,” Ash said. “Everybody who gets into skydiving gets into wingsuiting.”

Ash started with skydiving, flirted with BASE jumping, then settled on wingsuiting.

“You have to have 500 normal skydives before moving to the wingsuit,” he said. “I watched a couple of videos on YouTube. Half of my mates were going into BASE jumping. It was too risky and wingsuiting was just a notch down.”

Originally from Currumbin on the Gold Coast, Ash has honed his passion for the sport while residing on the Eastern Beaches, having lived in Bondi for the past ten years.

“I’ve been paragliding off the cliffs at Marks Park when there’s quite a nice north-easterly,” he said. “It’s a great area to live, walk the dog and go for a coffee.

“I love going for a surf and going for a jog along the beach. It’s my favourite area in the world – for me it’s like a bigger, more vibrant Gold Coast.”

The Australian trio don’t merely have the World Championships in their sights, with the Australian formation record also under threat. The current record is 14 wingsuit pilots flying in tight formation, with a record attempt of 40 wingsuiters flying across the sky planned for November.

“At the moment we’re practising for the Australian record,” Ash said. “We’ve got to get 40 people together and we can only take the best 40. We’re putting students through training at the moment – we’ve already got eight from Sydney.”