Skydiving prodigy: Started at 4, now boasts 26,000 jumps and 13 world titles

“Some people are in a circus, some people farm, some people are in corporate America. We were just people that jumped out of airplanes,” Rook Nelson told People Magazine in an exclusive interview. He’s been sky diving since he was four years old when his father took him along on a jump.

Since then, he’s made over 26,000 jumps and has multiple titles under his belt. “I come from a family of doing World Records and I feel like it’s in our blood,” he told Skydive Mag.

A skydiving prodigy

Nelson, whose real first name is Matthew, but only the bank and his wife, when she’s mad at him, call him that, first started sky diving in the mid-1980s. He told People that he doesn’t remember his first jump, only his parents shaking him around to make sure he wouldn’t fall out of the harness.

He is now the co-director and second-generation owner of Skydive Chicago, which his parents set up in the early 1980s and he inherited. He hopes to pass the family business onto his son Rocket.

However, he has yet to take his own son, who is currently seven, on a jump with him. “I think it’s crazy,” he said. But Rocket is getting experience on how to skydive in a safer environment. “I’ve taken him to the indoor wind tunnel,” Nelson explained.

The highly competitive athlete has laid claim to 13 world titles and 18 national championships. Most recently he organized and led a group of 174 skydivers, attempting to beat his own world record for head-down formation skydiving he set in 2015 with 164 individuals.

Nelson is credited with helping establish techniques that define vertical formation skydiving today. He was inducted into the International Skydiving Hall of Fame this year.

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