Aurora man claims his fifth world title
AURORA» The trajectory of Nicholas Batsch’s life changed abruptly when stepped out of an airplane for the first time at age 19 and could not wait to do it again. That first leap of faith set a flight plan for a skydiving hobby that became a career and made him a five-time world champion, his most recent medals coming at the world championships two weeks ago in Poland.
Since that first taste of the high life, the Aurora resident has compiled about 10,500 jumps. He has landed in Broncos Stadium at Mile High 25-30 times. One night he buzzed Red Rocks Amphitheatre during a String Cheese Incident show — yes, as part of the show — from 50 feet above the seats while trailing smoke from his boots before landing on the flats below. Then he climbed into a helicopter, went back up and did it again, this time trailing sparks in the night.
He’s done it without calamity and usually without incident. About five times he has had to rely on his secondary chute when there was a problem with the primary. In 2011, he hit a pond during a competition at too steep an angle at 90 mph. He didn’t break any bones, but he stretched all the tendons and muscles in his back and neck.
That mishap was pilot error. So was a crash last year when he landed with the improper body position, flipped onto his face and cut his lip
on the broken Go Pro he was wearing. His behind hurt for days after that one and his back hurt for months.
He still loves to jump out of airplanes, but now it’s less about the sensation and adrenaline rush. He’s a competitor and a good one.
In the past 10 years, he’s won 33 world championships medals including 17 gold. He also holds 10 world records.
“In the beginning, it was the great sensation of the thrill of the jump,” said Batsch, 36. “Just jumping from the aircraft, that’s a very overwhelming feeling. Most firsttime jumpers are fascinated with the sensation of being free and doing something different outside what normal people do. Now for me, the jump out of the aircraft isn’t the most excit ing part, because the parachutes I fly are extremely small and highperformance.”
When he first discovered parachuting, he was working as a hotel man ager while attending college. When he realized pursuing skydiving would require a bit more income than he was earning at the time, he found a job as a collection representative, which was more lucrative and gave him the flexible schedule he needed to focus on the sport.
Before long he was supporting himself and his passion by working as videographer, filming other folks jumping out of airplanes.
Now he teaches and coaches skydiving — including military parachutists — and calls himself a “professional canopy pilot.”
At events like world championships, skydivers jump out of airplanes a mile above the earth but the actual competition occurs within a few feet of the ground at 75100 mph.
They negotiate courses in four competitive events — speed, distance, accuracy and freestyle (tricks). There’s also an overall category which he won this year. In the other events there, he finished second in speed, third in distance, fourth in accuracy and fourth in freestyle.
“All of the top athletes are hitting the same vertical speeds under their parachutes and the same horizontal speeds at the entry gates of the competition,” Batsch said. “What I learned from Formula 1 or NASCAR or anything where you look at aerodynamics, my biggest thing is being a smooth pilot. Smooth is fast in most sports, so no abrupt inputs, nothing that is going to slow my parachute down too much. Developing body positions and dragreduction ways of flying. There’s been a lot of techniques that I’ve developed to push the sport further.”