'5+1' with Red Bull skydiving athlete Maja Kuczynska

In this edition of ‘5+1’ we spoke to Polish Red Bull athlete Maja Kuczynska. With eight years of competition experience, the 20 year old has made great waves from zero-g dances to mind numbing indoor diving routines. Maja usually competes once or twice a year as her choreography takes up to three months of everyday training. For that she makes her own music and creates her own routine.

1. Has there been somebody in particular that introduced you to the sport?

My dad skydives and has for a while and had introduced me to the tunnel when I was 10. This was another reason why I went from indoor to skydiving because you can begin indoor at age 10 and skydiving at 17. I'm pretty new to skydiving which is an interesting thing to say since I'm 20 years old with 3 years of experience.

2. Can you recall what the first few jumps in the earlier years have felt like and was it concerning at all to jump for the first time?

For indoor skydiving I think I saw a YouTube video a long time ago it was like super old school guys and I was just mind blown because obviously as a 10-year-old kid and these people are flying and you had no idea that was even possible. Then my dad and I went to Moscow in 2010, where the first of two indoor tunnels had been built. When I finally got in one, I loved it, and just wanted to do more and more of it. I'm usually not a very sporty person. I'm not really interested in sports like I don't really care about soccer. But because this was so crazy and interesting to me, I just loved it and want to do more and more of it.
No, I wasn’t because I knew when I started off flying indoor I would skydive since they are sister sports. I never really thought it was more dangerous or anything like that because it was such a natural thing for everybody around me to take interest in.

3. Your campaign with Google involves yourself taking to a zero-g environment. Has zero-g won you over or do you still prefer the freedom of falling?

It was amazing, I was so happy that I got it to work with Google and going zero-g had been the next thing on my bucket list. It was completely different from normal skydiving because the thing that propels you in a tunnel or sky is the surface area of your body pressing against the wind. In the plane, there's pretty much no force acting on you other than the force you apply against the walls. So this had made it especially difficult to control. 

4. Could you see in the future of your sport an actual zero-g discipline?

I would love to try and make a proper choreography routine with it because we only got to do the zero-g plane about 50 times. I think it’d be possible to make a routine but you have to find a balance to coordinate between the walls. If somebody wanted me to do that just to make it choreography I'd be the happiest girl on the planet.

5. The term or act of mobility has varying significance in everybody’s life. What sort of feeling or experience do you tie back to mobility?

It has completely changed my view on life. The time first skydiving opened my eyes to how different the world really is to what you expect as a child. There are so many crazy things to do that you can do as long as you're really good at it you can pretty much do whatever you want. The sport is very inspiring and the world looks so different to me now. I'm really happy that my life is the way it is and I’m very grateful for everyone who helped me get here.

And the +1 question for you: “I'm interested to know about what age people started doing what they're doing in order to be where they are.”

Now it’s your turn. Let us now about how old you have been when you started what you are doing in order to be where you are today? Share your answers with us in the comments below.

Pictures: Maja Kuczynska
Interview: Parker Schmidt