Jumping from an airplane from 13,500 feet up in the air? That’s no problem for Travis Feinhage.
Finding an affordable life insurance policy for his girlfriend – a fellow competitive skydiver – and him as they buy a house together? Now that’s a problem.
Participation in sporting events was always about living life on the edge and getting some kind of natural high for Feinhage.
No flag football or T-ball for him. Hockey was about as tame as it got for the Hampden native.
“I’ve been competitive my whole life with hockey, dirt bike racing, skiing and snowboarding, and trying to make a career out of that, but that didn’t really work out. I got beat up a little with those two sports,” Feinhage said.
So Feinhage turned to another extreme activity, which was initially intended as nothing more than an end-of-season activity to share with friends.
“I was living with some friends in a ski area in Mammoth, California, and decided to thank them for letting me stay with them by taking them all skydiving at the end of the season before I returned to Maine,” he explained. “It was amazing! I literally came back the next day and did six more jumps.”
Feinhage was hooked and not only turned his newfound passion into a vocation as an instructor and now a coach, but also as a national and world champion.
Talk about a natural high, both literally and figuratively.
“It’s adrenaline times 10 for me, but the biggest thing is it’s every person’s dream to fly and there’s nothing like it,” he said. “I’ve always had a goal that I wanted to be the best at something, whatever that was … Something I was passionate about, but it was never working out with other activitives and sports I was doing.”
Feinhage and skydiving partners Andy Malchiodi of Florida and Matthew Lewis of California can lay firm claim to being the best at something, both in the United States and the world after recently winning their third straight gold medal in the open freeflying competition at the U.S. Association National Skydiving Championships in Chicago and their first gold in the same class at the World Parachuting Championships in Menzelinski, Russia.
“That was quite a trip (to Russia). It took us three days just to get there. It was in the middle of nowhere man,” Feinhage said. “And they weren’t quite prepared when we first got there because we stayed in a converted mental health institution before they finally moved us into a hotel.”
The 34-year-old Feinhage and his teammates followed up a winning score of 9.2 (out of possible perfect 10) for a gold in their first World competition last August by finishing first among 10 teams with a personal-best 9.4 at the Nationals last month while also setting a world record with 24 different formations in 35 seconds during the cumpulsory round, smashing their own previous world mark of 18.
There are many different disciplines, but freeflying is the most artistic and freestylish of all of them,” Feinhage said. “It really puts a personal stamp on it. It’s all about self expression and seeing what you can come up with on your own, coming up with things that haven’t been done before and inspiring people to do things they might not have considered doing before.”
Though competitive, the skydiving community is anything but cutthroat, sharing ideas and techniques from successful routines and stunts, even among competitors at national and world competitions.
“We really contribute our success to hard work. How are you going to win? You have to work harder than the next guy and that’s what we live by,” said Feinhage. “We try to put in more time than anyone else. You have to because we share everything we’re doing with everyone in the community.
“It’s a tight community and it’s friendly competition so it’s not like anyone can rely on a secret weapon.”
There are typically only three or four competitive skydiving competitions a year nationally, so much of any skydiver’s or team’s success comes largely from practice.
“It takes a lot of time to come up with these routines,” explained Feinhage, who typically does 1,200 to 1,500 per year. “We did about 600 jumps together over four or five months.”
In competitions like Nationals and Worlds, jumpers are ranked by five judges in areas such as technical difficulty, presentation, and ease or perfection of routine. Feinhage’s team was followed by a Canadian team in second with 8.9 points. The Worlds took place over two days with seven rounds of competition involving seven total jumps by 14 different teams. Another U.S. team won bronze.
Skydivers have 45 seconds to do a complete routine while falling 13,500 feet from a twin turboprop airplane.
“It doesn’t seem like much time, but the more you do it, the slower the time goes. That 45 seconds feels like 2 to 3 minutes to us,” Feinhage explained. “It’s like a gymnastics routine where you’re trying to incorporate as much variety and technical difficulty as you can while also being presentable and appealing. I think with us, it’s all about variety.”
Although there aren’t many accidents or fatalities in skydiving competitions, all skydivers must sign waiver forms to compete to insulate sponsors and organizers from liability.
It’s been quite an eight-year odyssey for Feinhage, from that first skydive in California to coming back to Maine and working weekends at Central Maine Skydiving in Pittsfield and Skydiving New England as a parachute packer and cameraman to his current status as a professional skydiver and coach with Perris Valley Skydiving in Perris, Calif.
“There’s not a lot of money in skydiving. You’re not going to get rich doing it, but it’s where my heart is and I can make a living doing it,” Feinhage said. “I don’t ever feel like I’m working.”
Feinhage, who has worked as a carpenter, a salesman, an attendant for handicapped people, and a ski trail groomer, says it’s fun even when he’s not competing, In fact, he gets another kind of rush out of instructing beginners.
“The joy of working with first-timers is really great with all that energy and excitement you get and see from them,” he said.
It’s even better when that first-timer happens to be famous.
“I’ve worked with heart surgeons, scientists, actresses and athletes,” said the son of Carol and Rick Feinhage. “A couple of weeks ago, Tom Hanks went up with us with his wife and some bodyguards.”
But the biggest thrill so far for the former Hampden Academy student was taking father Rick and younger brother Kyle skydiving for the first time.
“My dad has gone once and he loved it. He couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks,” he said. “That was one of my biggest moments in my life with my dad and my brother.”