Breckenridge dentist’s skydiving team crowned champs

A Breckenridge dentist and his team of daredevils has flown to a national skydiving championship, narrowly slipping past the defending champs in the final round.

“We rocked it,” said Bob Meister, 45, a member of the team Mile High Mayhem who works in Breckenridge and lives in Dillon.

His team of four skydivers, a cameraman and a coach placed No. 1 in their first year as “A Class” competitors in the National Skydiving League championship in Deland, Fla.

The team came from behind, which Meister says is a rare occurrence in such a sport. Their opponents — Zero Tolerance of Miami — has dominated their class over the past five years.

“I think they were a little shocked a Colorado team came and took the trophy,” Meister said.

The competition, which took place on the weekend of Nov. 21-23, involved making formations as quickly as possible in a 35-second freefall out of an airplane.

Mile High Mayhem scored highest in Round 10, coming from behind to defeat their opponents 112-111, with a whopping 15 formations.

The Meeker, the Unipod, the Donut and the Stardian are a few of the formations in which teammates glide over and among one another, locking arms, legs and hands. On the day of the competition, teams are told which combination of three formations they will perform as many times as possible in the time window.

“It’s kind of like chess, trying to figure out the next move,” Meister said. “The goal is to go as fast as you can.”

The team earned its title through constant preparation, practicing two to three times per week in a wind tunnel over the past two years. Skyventure Colorado — in Lone Tree outside Denver — is team sponsor and provides the wind tunnel.

The team also took jumps in Longmont, but Meister credits the success in part to the use of the tunnel, where there’s more time to hone the moves.

“You can train more in the tunnel than you can in the sky,” he said.

And the weekend before the competition, they traveled to Perris, Calif., for some warm-weather training. Their ascent to the championship involved preliminary wins at the state and regional levels.

Meister said completing the formations is sort of a choreographed routine, where the dancers must work in sync.

“It’s like square dancing in the sky,” he said.

He’s succeeded in 650 jumps the past two years, but survived a close call last March on a wingsuit jump, when his pilot parachute didn’t open. Meister said he kept calm, cut loose his main parachute and opened the reserve canopy.

“Sometimes they can tangle,” he said. “You don’t have a lot of time.”

It was enough to dissuade him from BASE jumping, in which skydivers leap from buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth features like cliffs with only one parachute. Two BASE jumpers had died just before his own mishap occurred.

Otherwise, Meister said skydiving is a safe, relaxing experience that he truly enjoys.

“To be honest, the most relaxing part of my life is when I’m about to jump out the door,” Meister said, adding that it feels like a bird to soar into the open sky. “You can fly like Superman.”

Meister’s no stranger to extreme sports, having raced motorcycles and achieved national ranking in barefoot water skiing in his past. And he’s already taken his two-and-a-half year old daughter for sessions in the wind tunnel.

Meister said the adrenaline of skydiving tapers off with time. But the occasional rush hits sometimes in unexpected places. For example, he landed in a bull pen with a longhorn last May.

It was the “biggest rush all year,” he said, adding that he slowly gathered his chute and hopped the fence before the bull had time to charge.

Meister has also flown with hawks, which he said happens somewhat frequently in Longmont. They appear next to his open parachute as he glides through the air.

He and his team will continue to train for next year’s competition, when the Mile High Mayhem will enter as an “AA Class” team, the second-highest class in the league.

Robert Allen can be contacted at (970) 668-4628 or rallen@summitdaily.com.