S'pore indoor skydiving champion Kyra Poh fractures rib while doing outdoor skydiving license

She started jumping on her 16th birthday on June 8.

Matthias Ang | June 22, 2018, 08:17 PM

Singaporean indoor skydiving champion Kyra Poh will be grounded for six weeks after fracturing her rib while pursuing an outdoor skydiving licence in Norway.

This month saw the 16-year-old and her teammate Choo Yi Xuan there after about roughly eight years of keeping themselves confined to the wind tunnel to start outdoor skydiving for the first time when the accident happened.

Leg caught in fence in rough landing

They were accompanied by Poh's mother Carolyn Teo, who spoke to Mothership en route home, for roughly a week of intensive outdoor skydiving, and were slated to complete their Accelerated Free-Fall (AFF) and A licences within the period — a total of 20 jumps were planned.

Choo, 17, completed and attained both licences successfully, but Poh wasn't as fortunate — on her 16th jump, a rough landing saw her leg get caught in a fence and ending chest-first on the ground.

Teo shared this in a Facebook post from her daughter on the Team Firefly page:

Poh herself also shared her reflections on her experience, with a cool video of her executing her signature exciting stunts in the air:

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A brief sidetrack about outdoor skydiving licenses

According to Norwegian skydiving company SkydiveVoss, the AFF license course teaches students how to stabilise and turn themselves in free-fall along with deploying their own parachutes for a successful landing.

A total of seven successful jumps with an instructor are required to obtain the AFF license.

Once this is achieved, the student may then move on to a "level 8" jump where he or she may jump by themselves without assistance from an instructor.

13 of these "level 8" jumps together with the first 7 jumps for the AFF license within a calendar year fulfil the jumping requirement for the outdoor skydiving A-license.

A theory exam and a packing exam make up the other requirements.

Once the A-license has been obtained, the student is now qualified to jump without supervision, pack their own parachute, perform basic group jumps and water jumps.

Girls paid for their own courses and trip

Interestingly, though, Teo says the girls paid their own way for their skydiving courses — which came up to a collective total of 8,720 Norwegian Krones (about S$1,460).

Teo says they paid their course fees with their prize money from previous competitions:

"Both their airfare and trip is paid by us. We took it that it was a holiday as well. But for their licenses we want them to have the sense of doing this for themselves by themselves."

What about Poh's A licence, though? Teo says her daughter will finish her remaining four jumps within the year once she has recovered.

Thankfully, her intensive training schedule ahead of her next world championship competition in October will also not be compromised by her six-week downtime — Teo says it is only slated to start in August.

At the 3rd FAI World Cup of Indoor Skydiving, slated to be held in Bahrain, Poh will not be defending her two-time title of champion in the Junior Freestyle category which is for aged 18 and below — instead, she will be taking on the Open Freestyle category (perhaps so she will stop spoiling the market for junior competitors, heh).

Additionally, Poh and Choo will be competing in the Open Two-Way Dynamic Category while Choo will also be taking part in the Junior Freestyle category since it's her first time at the World Championship level doing so.

Teo speaks with excitement and pride of the girls, despite this brief setback, though:

"I hope they will inspire more people to let their kids follow their passion — and yes Kyra will have been hurt slightly but she didn’t choose a sport that comes with no risk — of course the tunnel is so so much safer! So it will be her grit and resilience that will get her better to compete again in October."

Indeed for the two teenagers, it would seem that the sky really is the limit, especially since the queens of the wind tunnel have now started skydiving in the great wide outdoors.

More about Poh and Choo:

Top image from Team Firefly Singapore Facebook