Dubai: The inaugural edition of the X-Dubai Flyboard World Cup will be held alongside the ongoing Fifth Dubai International Parachuting Championship (DIPC) taking place at Skydive Dubai on The Palm till Saturday [December 6].
The competition with a total of $30,000 (Dh110,000) prize money is being organised by X-Dubai in three categories, amateurs and professionals for men and women.
So far, the organisers have received entries from nearly 200 participants confirming for the three-day championships. After the preliminary rounds that were scheduled for today, the field will be trimmed down to the best 32 riders, who will be engaged in a knock-out competition tomorrow followed by the finals on Saturday.
Javad Khoramifar, Marketing Director, X-Dubai, was pleased with the response this inaugural edition has received from competitors from across the world. “This gives us reason to be hopeful that Flyboard has a bright future as one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. This competition is a start for us and we are hopeful we can continue drawing the attention of people, especially those attending the Parachuting Championship,” Khoramifar said.
Led by Franky Zapata, Flyboard inventor and CEO of Zapata Racing, the X-Dubai team has been demonstrating the finer elements of the new sport to visitors at the Sky Dubai site every day on the sidelines of DIPC. “The initial response has been good and we can see the enthusiasm with which the general public has been drawn to our sport. People have come up to us and told us how they have felt to see such innovations coming to Dubai,” Khoramifar remarked.
This week’s competition in Dubai will be the third major global championships following the first two World Championships held in Doha in 2012 and 2013. “This marks one of the quickest growths in sport as the Flyboard was invented only in 2011. We have come a long way in such a short time since then,” he added.
Zapata holds a patent for inventing Flyboard. After the initial design, the Frenchman from Marseille put several prototypes to test before perfecting a design that allows the device to climb out of the water and achieve stability in the air jointly through the use of underfoot propulsion and hand stabilization.
