A chance encounter at a school jobs fair led Natisha Dingle to her passion in life \u2014 jumping from a plane and freefalling at nearly 500 kilometres per hour.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing quite like it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve tried other things, but this is what I’m passionate about.”<\/p>\n
The now 37-year-old has been an avid skydiver since receiving a $25 voucher to try out the sport at the age of 15, and she has not looked back.<\/p>\n
Dingle has also retained her World’s Fastest Female title at the FAI World Cup of Speed Skydiving in Austria, after reaching a top average speed of 497.31kph, setting a new Oceanian record.<\/p>\n
Last month, she joined more than 60 competitors at the competition as they attempted to go as fast as possible in freefall, before deploying their parachutes and landing safely.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Natisha Dingle has retained her title as World’s Fastest Female speed skydiver. (ABC Southern Qld: Aisling Brennan)<\/p>\n
Dingle also won gold in the mixed team category, breaking Oceanian and world records with teammate Mervyn O’Connell.<\/p>\n
She ventured into speed skydiving after competing in four-way formation skydiving.<\/p>\n
“It feels like freedom to me,” Dingle said.<\/p>\n
“You’re not thinking about what’s happening in your life, you’re not thinking about what you’re having for dinner. You’re thinking about the task at hand.”<\/p>\n
What speed skydiving can feel like<\/p>\n
Dingle said it was difficult to describe the feeling of freefalling at nearly 500kph.<\/p>\n
“The only thing I can put it to that relates to people that don’t skydive is, and I don’t recommend it but we’ve all probably done it, putting your hand out of the car window at 100kph and then times that by five,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Natisha Dingle has represented Australia in speed skydiving around the world. (Suplied: Mason Corby)<\/p>\n
“As you can imagine, the air’s going over your body and you sometimes can wobble a little bit, but the trick is to try not to move very much and just hold your body position and let the wind flow over you.<\/p>\n
“Every time you move, every time you put something into the wind, you’re slowing down \u2026 so the trick is to not try too hard.”<\/p>\n
But travelling at such speed requires more than just craving that adrenaline rush.<\/p>\n
She explained the sport was a “head game”, so time spent on the ground preparing for jumps was just as important as the moments in the air.<\/p>\n
“I meditate and I balance my chakras on the ground before I take off. I really try and focus all of my energy into my energy centre,” she said.<\/p>\n
Dingle said sharp focus was vital as there was “always going to be distractions”.<\/p>\n
” [At the World Cup] there was a whole weather day, so you’ve got like a whole day to sit on the ground and think about what you’ve done right, what you’ve done wrong, what you’re going do next,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I try to really not worry about things that you can’t control, and I think that’s a really good thing to take into everyday life.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Natisha Dingle has been skydiving since she was a teenager. (Supplied: Steve Fitch)<\/p>\n
Dingle has been doing her jumps for about a decade at Toogoolawah, about 120km west of Brisbane, while also teaching others how to safely skydive.<\/p>\n
“I know at the beginning it can be nerve-wracking, and we get the sensory overload, but I just think being calm and confident leads to successful skydives,” Dingle said.<\/p>\n
“That’s the energy I try and give to my students.”<\/p>\n
She said it was all about finding and building confidence but warned it could be “quite addictive”.<\/p>\n
“I don’t ever feel bad about spending money on skydiving but if I go to a nice restaurant and the steak’s a bit chewy, I’m a bit annoyed,” she said.<\/p>\n
Australia dominates competition<\/p>\n
The Australian team dominated the World Cup this year, with Dingle and Mervyn O’Connell winning gold and a world record in the mixed team event with the highest average speed, 507.58kph.<\/p>\n
Hailing from Merrijig in Victoria, O’Connell also set Oceanian records in several events, including reaching a maximum vertical speed without a drogue parachute at 541.51kph.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Natisha Dingle and Mervyn O’Connell won gold in the mixed team speed skydiving event in Austria. (Supplied: Australian Parachute Federation)<\/p>\n
O’Connell and his Australian teammates, Simon Walsh and Heath Baird, also claimed a world record with a highest average speed in the team event of 506.13kph.<\/p>\n
Dingle said she would love to see the sport get wider recognition and even hoped it could be added to the Olympics one day.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s a lot of time and dedication and personal money that goes into achieving this and we do it really for the love [of the sport],” she said.<\/p>\n
“We already have a world-sanctioned event, so I don’t see why it can’t be a part of the Olympics.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A chance encounter at a school jobs fair led Natisha Dingle to her passion in life \u2014 jumping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[109261,64,63,109257,109260,109259,109258,44,109256,24862],"class_list":["post-166269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-adventure-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fai-world-cup-of-speed-skydiving","tag-freefall","tag-mervyn-oconnell","tag-natisha-dingle","tag-news","tag-speed-skydiving","tag-world-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}