Ondrej Prochazka sets a new Esfera record in Mexico

Ondrej Prochazka set a new official FAI Esfera record launching from a hot-air balloon in Mexico in January 2016. He performed 9 consecutive Esferas. Later on we met up in Valle de Bravo, Mexico during the PWC Superfinal, so I threw a few questions at him.

justACRO: First of all, how did you get the idea to attempt a record in Esferas?
Ondrej: To be honest I didn’t plan anything before going to Mexico. At one moment I was even thinking to take only cross-country hike&fly equipment, because I am getting tired of traveling with the heavy acro kit.
Then I spoke about my trip with Veso and he told me I must take the acro gear as there are some great dynamic flying spots and also he introduced me to Fabul, who is operating a hot air balloon company in Monterrey. Fabul was super kind from the first moment and invited me to hang around and jump from his balloon. I was thinking how to help him out in return and make a bit of publicity for his company. Eventually I came up with the idea to attempt a record.

J.A.: Why Esfera?
O.: I had a limited attitude and also Horacio’s Infinity record is a tough one to beat with a lot of suffering to be
undertaken...Secondly the other tricks like twisters or trippies are probably not so interesting from the spectators’ point of view. I made a rough calculation to see how many Esferas would fit in the available altitude and it seemed possible to beat the previous record of 6 repetitions.

J.A.: Do you do this trick a lot?
O.: At one point when I started learning it I did many, especially to understand the influence of different weight-shifting in the Anti-Rhythmic phase and also to practice the left rhythmic. Now I don’t fly the Esfera much, because I think this trick makes the wing suffer a lot and it eats a lot of altitude. Two years back I tried to link together 2-3 esferas a few times and I was surprised how physical it was. Last year I tried 5 in Colombia starting from cloudbase at about 4000 meters and that also took a lot of juice out of me, probably it is still the current foot-launch record.

J.A.: In the end you managed 9 Esferas, how did it gol?
O.: I was always wondering where the limits to all this are, but I didn’t expect to have problems during the record attempt. In reality it was much different and I felt very tired after the 7th Esfera – was very tiring for my neck and I felt out of power during pulling the Rhythmic SAT. What kept me going after the seventh one was that I thought I made just 5, as I didn’t really count during the run. So with a lot of determination I battled to do at least two more to get the record. I landed thinking I made 7 and got to know I made 9 just after looking at the footage.

J.A.: Nice, congrats again!
O.: Thanks a lot. Greetings to all the readers and don’t forget to checkout the short-film from the record attempt.

Watch the Esfera record video clip here