Most people have no problem at all declining an invitation to plummet toward the ground at 200 kilometres per hour. Life is dangerous enough without jumping out of planes.

And yet tens of thousands of people around the world do it - and find it the most enjoyable thing they've ever done.

Hundreds of skydivers from World Team were in Thailand earlier this year for the Royal Sky Celebration, dedicating new aerial records to His Majesty the King.

In between the world's first 400-person free-fall formation and the world's largest mass jump, some of the record-setters gave The Nation a glimpse of what makes them plunge.

It's said that if you put 10 skydivers in a room and ask them why they do it, you get 10 different answers.

"They'd actually probably give you 11 different answers because they always change their minds," laughs World Team director BJ Worth.

And he would know. In his more than 35 years of skydiving, Worth has amassed world records, stunt performances and other jumping accolades to become one of the most famous people in the sport. While you might not recognise his name, you've probably seen his work: Worth did the aerobatic stunts in seven James Bond films.

"Why?" is a question skydivers get asked all the time, and one that, truth be told, they get a little tired of answering, not least because it's usually asked by someone who's never made a jump.

"Everyone has one thing in common - either you've jumped or you haven't. If you've jumped you're part of a community of people who have done something that in our minds is a little special, but in other people's minds is a little crazy," Worth says.

Skydiving certainly isn't a sport for the cautious, but the people who do it aren't crazy either. They say it's not about defying death, but having an experience that can't be replicated by anything else.

"I just love the fact of falling through the air," says American Craig Girard, a world champion several times over who has more than 22,000 jumps under his belt.

"I look at it not as a thrill-seeker thing, but as an opportunity to experience another kind of freedom - flying. Fulfilling a dream that I think every person has had since they were little kids."

Skydivers routinely cite the adrenaline rush that comes from the unnatural act of leaping from a plane thousands of metres up in the sky. They talk about the sight of the ground rushing up as you fall at speeds approaching 200 kilometres per hour. They enthuse over ability to tear through the air like a rocket.

"The main reason most of us do it is because it's a lot of fun. It puts a smile on our face," Worth says. "The stress of the world goes away. We're not thinking about our jobs or obligations or commitments."

Larry Henderson, another American, agrees. "It's strictly skydiving - I'm not thinking about anything else. And that's why it's such a relaxing thing for me. It blows all the rust off. I come home relaxed. My wife used to tell me, 'I think you need to go to the drop zone cause you're getting hard to live with'." 

Considering how young many World Team members were when they started skydiving, you'd think it was something that would have driven their parents crazy with worry. But, in some cases, the opposite was true.

"My mother suggested that I go  jumping," Robert Laidlaw of Canada says, chuckling. "When she said that to me and my brother, I just looked at her for about 10 seconds and then said, 'Sure, why not?'"

Does it get a little boring after, say, the first thousand times?

"Skydiving itself doesn't lose its edge," says Erwin van Hooydonk of the Netherlands. For him, there's always a rush, a feeling of euphoria when he exits the plane.

"If you're just jumping by yourself, well, it's a little more casual, a little less thrilling, but it's always fun," Henderson adds. "If it's a world record attempt, of course its high stress, high interest, high excitement."

And the record that World Team set for the first 400-person freefall formation in Udon Thani in February was all of those things.

Jumping from five Royal Thai Air Force C-130s at 7,200 metres, they had barely 83 seconds of freefall to create a flower-like formation the size of a football field. It was perhaps the most audacious and difficult mass-skydiving manoeuvre ever attempted.

"At an event like this we are accomplishing something that's never been done before," Worth says. "You have to really work hard, it's a great challenge. And when we're successful it's a sense of euphoria that can't be described. It's a big part of the reason why I do it, and why I think a lot of the people here jump."

Chris Vedelago

Special to The Nation