SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Bonsall resident Jason Sanders certainly has a passion for skydiving. He's been jumping out of planes with a parachute for a little over 20 years.
"I have about 24,000 jumps," Sanders said.
He says he looked to skydiving after suffering a personal tragedy in his life. He credits jumping out of airplanes as saving his life.
"I was really depressed at that time in my life, and I didn't really want to live," Sanders said. "Finding skydiving opened my eyes and made me realize there is a lot to live for."
The 45-year-old says skydiving is like a form of therapy in the sky.
"It's more like being free, free of everything. When I'm up there, I'm free of any stress or worries of day-to-day life," he said. "Everything that is negative that tries to beat you down."
He is very passionate about skydiving, and you have to be when you have jumped over 24,000 times. He has taken on dual roles as a skydiver, as he works as both a skydiving instructor as well as a competitor. He first started competing in canopy piloting, also called "swooping," in 2006.
"It's just flying a very fast parachute, doing a turn low to the ground, and as you recover, taking that vertical speed and generating it forward," Sanders said.
In swooping, the diver reaches speeds of over 100 miles per hour before turning horizontal just feet from the ground. At that point, the pilot is aiming for distance and accuracy.
"Often, I will get down, and my hand will be shaking from the adrenaline. Swooping didn't just happen overnight," he said. "It took me many years and thousands of skydives and practice to get to this level."
While competing at the World Parachute Championships in Arizona, Sanders achieved a goal that he had set his eyes on for quite some time. He set a world record for the distance at just over 201 meters.
"I knew I had it. The past few years, I've been training a lot more and just putting more time into it.," he said. "I've been working on eliminating my mistakes, which I believe helped me to set the world record."
