Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Skydivers demo sport in Cebu
FOREIGN skydivers are in Cebu to demonstrate the sport starting today until the Sinulog festival.
Skydivers Herman Landsman, Henry Woerlee, and Martijn Van Dam will be having an accelerated free fall course here in Cebu City. They will be doing demonstration jumps at the Sourth Reclamation Properties (SRP), including a tandem jump where two people will be skydiving together.
The demonstration is part of a move to increase local interest on skydiving.
After the team’s initial visit here in the country, members are planning to come back and stage a bigger skydiving event with international professional skydivers. Team members held a press conference to talk about their program at the Crown Regency Hotel yesterday.
Landsman, who has been skydiving for over 30 years, is confident that with their promotion of the sport here in the Philippines, a lot of Filipinos will be getting into the sport. Landsman also teaches in a skydiving school
He said they will be holding more events in the future and hope to attract more Filipinos to the sport. Landsman is in the country through the request of Jump Club head Anthony Chua.
Today, Landsman, Woerlee and Van Dam will be flying from Mactan and jumping over the SRP at 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. for the first and second jumps and at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. for their third and fourth jumps.
Meanwhile, Cebu City Councilor Sylvan “Jack” Jakosalem is still optimistic Acting Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama will reconsider his rejection of a request to have professional skydivers land in the Cebu City Sports Complex during the Sinulog.
Jakosalem, chairman of the council committee on sports, amusement and games, said Rama turned down the request because previous skydivers missed the landing site and ended up on trees and other dangerous areas.
He said, however, that he is still hoping Rama will reverse his decisions since members of the group “are professional skydivers and I told him that they can even land on the stage if he wants.”
“They even prepared a Philippine flag colored parachute for it. It would be a spectacle to watch them in their colorful chutes to signal the start of the Sinulog, if granted the permission,” Jackosalem said in a text message to Sun.Star Cebu. (EKA)
