Patrick Passe, in his quality as organizer of big-way sequential loads, tells a "nice little AND cool story" about a father and a son sharing the same passion.
Wind tunnel training makes it possible that Stéphane Mattoni and his 16-year-old son Tom are able to share the same sky too.
SEED OF A CHAMPION by Patrick Passe
A lot of people know Stéphane Mattoni, 4-way and 8-way competitor on the Monaco Parachute Team, holder of many large formation world records. His 16-year-old son Tom is also addicted to the relative wind. He started to fly in the tunnel when he was nine years old. Then he has been selected for the French National 4-way team in the Indoor Junior category. Since the Tom became French, European and World Champion in his category. Together with his teammates Eliot Massier, Oscar Massier and Cameron Malié, he set one world record with 36 points in 2017, and one French record with 44 points in 2018.
Several months ago and with 150 hours of tunnel time, Tom did his AFF. There was no way around it ...
Last week-end in Grenoble, he came with his father to the 20-way event I organized. He came to do solo jumps from the Skyvan tail gate for the first time. He showed up at the DZ with a bit less than 50 jumps.
"Do you want your son to do a 20-way with us?" "YES!" Stéphabe replied.
We briefed a cool 20-way with 4 points. "Put him floater," asks Stephane. "OK, and you quite close to help him if needed."
Tom didn’t need any help, just a little indication from his Dad to rush to the end of his line on the second point. Big star for the 3rd point. Tom can see everyone’s smile.
4th point. Tom and his Dad fly to the center of the big star to meet a nice smiling girl and a cool guy in a 4-way star. It was his 54th jump. The next day, Tom headed back to school being on another planet.
Tom is now on a outdoor 4-way team project.
More photos here!
Marin Ferré, a French formation skydiving great, added a photo photo of Tom with the following comment below Patrick's post. "When you know that this is a picture of his fourth AFF jump, you're not surprised by anything Tom is able to do in the sky."
