You might have known that Novak Djokovic is ranked the No. 2 tennis player in the world — and that he’s the defending champion of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships this year — but were you aware that he all but reverts to adolescence when faced with the prospect of indoor Skydiving for the first time?
The 26-year-old was all big, awestruck smiles and youthful delight upon arriving to the private Skydiving facility of Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, which he had been invited to along with a few guests.
Djokovic’s coach and ex-No. 1 champion, Boris Becker, had tagged along for the adventure, but he was a bit more hesitant to jump right in. He had a question, first: “What’s going to happen to us, physically?”
His hesitance earned him a laugh from the room, and especially from Djokovic, Djokovic’s brother, Marko, and his friend, Charlie, who would all be going into the 12 foot wind tunnel soon.
“We’ll do the briefing in here,” instructor Brad Cole assured them.
“The breathing?” Djokovic joked. “I need to do the breathing, too.”
“Jackets off, watches, jewellery, anything that could potentially explode,” Cole instructed. “Has anyone ever had a dislocated shoulder? If you haven’t had problems with your shoulder, you’ll be fine.”
“What about hips?” Becker retorted. At 46-years-old, the six-time Grand Slam champion wasn’t quite as fearless as Djokovic when it came to delving into the world of extreme sports. But it would be a good bonding experience for the two, as they had only joined forces professionally in December of last year.
Gearing up
Next up, the jovial foursome were led to a small side room where they could grab jumpsuits, sneakers, helmets and goggles. Djokovic threw his leg up and hooked it over his brother’s elbow for a warm-up stretching exercise as he twisted his face up in exaggerated exertion.
“Boris, you want?” he asked once he was back on both feet, offering his brother’s services up in case Becker wanted to follow suit with his own leg.
“I can’t go that high,” Becker joked.
After the lanky Djokovic slipped into his jumpsuit — he admitted that everything looked baggy on his slim figure — he grabbed a pair of size 45 Nike sneakers but, before he could sit down to pull them on, he paused, holding them up in front of his agents.
“Is this problem?” he asked, grinning; the star was in business with competing footwear brand, adidas. His agents laughed and he settled the issue himself, shelving the shoes and picking another pair. “Could be problem.”
After gearing up, Djokovic grabbed a pair of mandatory ear plugs that functioned to block out the deafening roar of high-speed winds inside of the tunnel. He prematurely stuck them into his ears, frowning.
“I don’t wanna hear you guys,” he deadpanned.
The irked act didn’t last long, however. He was back to play-wrestling with Charlie in no time.
“Let’s do it”
When everyone was dressed and ready to go, the briefing was finally on its way.
In a spacious sitting room to the right side of the tunnel, Cole explained which positions were important to remember —- back arched, chin thrust upward, arms held ahead but bent at the elbows.
Since they wouldn’t be able to communicate verbally inside the tunnel, Cole demonstrated what gestures he would be using — for instance, two fingers held horizontally, like a pair of parted scissors, meant that you had to stretch your legs forward more, but two fingers that hooked inwards meant that you had to bend them.
“Any questions?” Cole asked.
“Let’s do it!” exclaimed Djokovic. “That’s the only question.”
But Becker was more careful. As they re-entered the main room and gathered around the octagon tunnel that was enclosed in glass, he peered upwards at the triangular “roof” of it. “We can’t fly away?”
Djokovic, having himself a banana snack, peered down at the netting that separated the “basement” of the tunnel from the main midsection. Instead of soothing Becker’s worries, he joked that they might be sucked downwards through the criss-crossed wires.
“It might slice you,” he said. “A little minced meat.”
Flying high
In technical terminology, the tunnel is known as a “venturi tube”. Cole explained that this meant there were four fans up top that more-or-less controlled the speed and suction of the air. As the air rose upwards, it became compressed. The speed slowed down towards the top and the bottom of the tunnel. In the basement of it, you would barely feel a faint breeze, and you could only experience the full force of the wind in the 12 foot midsection.
So, for a first time flier whose biggest concern is going too far high or being pulled down through the netting, they can rest easy.
Marko, Djokovic’s brother, was the first to jump in. Cole controlled him by the back of his jumpsuit and, occasionally, held him by the middle and maneuvered him like a swimming instructor would. Marko did quite well, according to Cole. But when Boris entered next, he looked like he might be ill, keeping his mouth pursed shut as his cheeks flapped in the wind, moving his arms around despite Cole’s instructions to keep his body at a neutral position.
From a viewing area, the remaining three cackled loudly, howled, cheered and clapped as they watched on, looking even more reminiscent of excitable teenagers than when they first arrived.
When it came Djokovic’s turn, he dove in headfirst and screamed right into the camera that would snap pictures of him from the control room. From the inside, with winds going at approximately 110 miles per hour, he was heard letting out continuous muffled yells and sounds that were akin to a cartoon ghost, all the while grinning, sticking out his tongue and putting the thumbs up.
“Above average,” Cole told tabloid! of Djokovic’s performance. The athlete’s muscular build had worked against him, however, and he would have to work on his finesse.
Cole and his fellow instructor, Micah Couch, gave a professional-level demonstration between the newcomers’ attempts that looked something like a Daft Punk video — the two danced, twirled and flippied around each other seamlessly while the wind blew at over 200mph.
Djokovic told tabloid! it wasn’t nearly as simple as it looked.
“I was screaming pretty loud because it was overwhelming,” he said. “They were trying to prepare us with what we were going to face, the strength and the power of the wind … because we’d never done it, we couldn’t really know how exactly it was going to be. That’s why, when you actually get in there, in the tunnel, it’s absolutely overwhelming. It’s incredible.”
“It’s not easy to do, even though you saw, probably, expressions on our faces which were amazed — crazy faces and tongues and stuff like this, but it’s not easy!”
It was Djokovic’s first taste of extreme sport, he confessed, and he was pleased to find out that indoor skydiving was a near exact simulation of the real thing. He wasn’t eager to test that theory for himself.
“My brother told me he wants to jump from the plane now,” he laughed. “We’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna jump from the plane, but I’m definitely gonna be supporting my brother — maybe from the pilot’s cabin, I’m gonna give the green light and the thumbs up and say, ‘Okay, jump, man!’ and I’m gonna watch from the sky. We’ll see.”
