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The first WindGames event took place in 2014 at Windoor's indoor skydiving facility in Empuriabrava, Spain, where every event has been held since. The competition featured four main indoor skydiving disciplines: Formation Skydiving (FS), Vertical Formation Skydiving (VFS) and 2-way Dynamic (D2W).[1]
In January 2016, the third Wind Games became the first indoor skydiving competition in history to mandate a musical interpretation round for all freestyle competitors.[2] While international sporting bodies such as the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) had previously allowed music as an optional element, the 2016 Wind Games made choreographed musical flight a compulsory requirement for the event.[2]
The concept began in August 2015 when Anne Maxwell, the creator of the Wind Games and former Pro Flyer manager at Windoor, contacted Mexican-Canadian competitor Lise Hernandez Girouard, who had previously pioneered musical integration in wind tunnels.[2] Maxwell sought to introduce the solo freestyle discipline to the competition featuring a mandatory musical round.[2] Hernandez Girouard organized the category, drafting the official competition rules and serving as the Head Judge.[2]
The new freestyle format required athletes to perform three specific rounds:
Low-Speed Flow: Evaluating body control and continuous artistic lines at lower wind speeds.
High-Speed Flight: Evaluating technical power, speed, and vertical acrobatic transitions.
Mandatory Musical Interpretation: Evaluating an original choreographed routine set to a chosen music track.
To score the musical round across both technical execution and artistic expression, the judging panel was hybridized to include technical freeflyer Adam Mattacola, professional dance choreographer Dolo Yglesias, and Hernandez Girouard.[2]
Five athletes competed in the inaugural event. Russian athlete Leonid Volkov won first place with a highly theatrical routine, Polish athlete Maja Kuczyńska won second, and Canadian Guillaume Boileau won third.[2]
Driven by the new musical format, videos of the 2016 performances achieved unprecedented publicity for the sport.[3] The routine of Leonid Volkov was the first routine to pierce the attention of the media. [4] A video of Kuczyńska's routine set to the song "Chandelier" by Sia went viral on social media, amassing over 100 million views and bringing massive mainstream awareness to the niche sport of indoor skydiving.[5] This global viewership secured Red Bull as the main title sponsor for the event the following year.[6]
In 2017, the Wind Games changed the freestyle format. The competition removed professional dancers from the judging panel and introduced mandatory flight elements for athletes to execute[7][8], aligning the rules more closely with the technical standards of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
The 2021 WindGames indoor skydiving competition was cancelled due to an extended pause in operations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Following this pause, the WindGames resumed in 2024.[9]. The next edition, the WindGames 2027, is scheduled to be held on January 28, 29, and 30, 2027.[10]
The WindGames include Vertical Formation Skydiving, 4-way Formation Skydiving, 2-way Dynamic, 4-way Dynamic, Solo Speed, Freestyle and Freestyle Junior.
Empuriabrava