Fort Mill High grad hopes to land on his feet in World Cup

A Fort Mill High School graduate is soaring and swooping high above the Saint Lawrence River this week representing the U.S. in the eighth World Cup competition for a little known, but quickly growing sport.

Canopy piloting is exactly what it sounds like. Pilots like Ryan Brownlow jump from an airplane, then guide special parachutes through an obstacle course over a pond. Pilots are scored on their speed, accuracy and distance.

“It's the epitome of performance of a parachute, and being able to fly a parachute,” Brownlow said.

“Basically like a race car driver's control over a race car, it's the same thing with a parachute. It's the most high performance parachute that has ever been invented and the people fly them as precisely as possible. It can be very dangerous.”

Brownlow moved to Fort Mill when he was 8-years-old and graduated from Fort Mill High School in 1997. He now lives in Oakland, Calif., where he designs software for a living. But his passion is for the sport he's been involved in for more than a decade. The World Cup happens every other year. In order to qualify for the U.S. team, an athlete has to perform well at Nationals, which were held back in June. This is Brownlow's fifth time qualifying for, and representing, Team USA.

“I'm kind of getting up there in age as far as people who do it, so it's probably one of my last years so it's definitely good to have made it this year,” he said.

Brownlow's father was a skydiver, so as a young man, Ryan spent much of his time packing parachutes at Skydive Carolina in Chester. He said his interest in the sport, and the specialty of canopy piloting, quickly took off.

“When I first started it was just about having fun skydiving and it kind of evolved into learning better skills and getting better at flying canopies and that evolved into competing and it's been about 15 years since I started and now I'm one of the more experienced competition canopy pilots,”

Now he's completed more than 9,000 jumps and has an impressive competition record. Which, for Brownlow, is one of the best rewards of the sport.

“There's the adrenaline rush, there's that whole aspect of it. But at this point it's more of an accomplishment of performance. I want to go and compete and do well and I want my peers I compete with to respect my abilities and think I'm a good pilot,” he said.

The competition is intense. Up to 150 people from across the world will navigate the course set up on a pond. They'll be coming in it at speeds of up to 105 miles per hour in a dive and around 85 miles an hour while navigating the course.

The last time the World Cup was held, Brownlow was in ninth place before he says an error in the final round caused him to come in 20th . This time, he hopes to finish in the top 10.

“I'm definitely better at speed. Accuracy would be my weak event for sure. It's the most challenging,” he said.

This story was originally published August 24, 2015 at 12:58 PM with the headline "Fort Mill High grad hopes to land on his feet in World Cup."