Kyra Poh: The 14-year-old girl who's the fastest flyer
Fourteen-12 months-old indoor skydiver Kyra Poh was topped the "international's quickest flyer" in certainly one of the game's largest competitions, the Wind video games. She tells the BBC's Tessa Wong what it takes to soar to the top.
Riding winds as fast as 230km/h (143mph), Kyra flips and whirls around the area, a small blur of white spandex in a giant vertical wind tunnel.
Inside the air the Singaporean teenager makes all of it appearance convenient - a aggregate of dancing and floating - but in fact it is tough work.
"you operate all your muscular tissues for this sport. Even those muscle tissue you in no way knew existed, they may start to ache. Even your wrists will hurt," she tells the BBC from Spain.
About 2 hundred indoor skydivers competed on the Wind games held in Catalonia in Spain at the weekend- Kyra become now not simplest among the few women who took element, but also one of the youngest.
It become her first time competing towards adults in a huge-scale opposition.
But she without problems beat them to win gold medals within the solo speed category, wherein a routine should be finished within the fastest time feasible, and the freestyle category, wherein competition are graded on their choreography and the problem of their actions.
She says being smaller and lighter than her competition did now not supply her an advantage. In truth, she thinks it made things greater tough.
"a lot of people assume that if you're lighter, you're faster. I don't suppose so. Because whilst you're small, you have got less body surface vicinity, so that you can push off less wind. If you're taller, you can push off extra and feature extra pressure," she says.
Kyra won the gold medal inside the junior freestyle category at the FAI international Cup of Indoor Skydiving, held in October final year in Poland.
'I overlook i'm flying'
Kyra fell into the game by chance. Whilst she changed into nine her mother, an advertising government, became hired to create classified ads for indoor skydiving facility iFly in Singapore, and that they needed a toddler to appear of their ads.
"My mum requested me to try it out. I said yes. I simply desired to fly... And it changed into truly interesting.
"once I first jumped in, i was apprehensive. However now these days when I cross in, on occasion I forget i am flying. The wind is so rapid, occasionally when I fly, it looks like something is maintaining me up as opposed to me floating," she says.
Kyra practices three times a week after faculty, and more regularly throughout competition season. Every consultation takes hours - flying repeatedly can be gruelling, and she can simplest fly in brief spurts of 3 mins before taking a destroy.
She also regularly does lengthy stretching sessions to improve her flexibility. Not like most girl indoor skydivers, Kyra does not have a gymnastics or dance history.
However she tries to make up for that in different ways.
"lady competition tend to have a totally swish fashion and are very bendy. So I try to incorporate that in my ordinary with powerful, aggressive moves which men use, which are very technical and rapid," she says.
Indoor skydiving is a completely new game, but Kyra sees it as her lifelong ardour and hopes to be a expert athlete.
"whilst i was smaller I used to attract photos of myself flying over Singapore. I even wanted to be an astronaut, to go with the flow in 0 gravity.
"people are not intended to fly, however that has always been my dream. Now i can fly in a tunnel, so i'm satisfied to locate this sport."
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