Singapore teen indoor skydiver’s Olympic Games dream, how she practises five hours a day after school, and her signature move

Kyra Poh is one of the youngest competitors in her sport at 17, and one of only two indoor skydivers to win sponsorship from extreme-sports promoter Red Bull

A discipline that blends aspects of dance, figure skating, acrobatics and diving, it is one the Singaporean hopes to showcase at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Reading Time:6 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Having fallen into indoor skydiving by accident as a child, Kyra Poh, 17, from Singapore has become one of the world’s leading figures in a niche sport that blends elements of dance, diving, acrobatics and figure skating.

Lauren James

Published: 7:45am, 31 Jan 2020Updated: 7:45am, 31 Jan 2020

Kyra Poh may be small, but she flies through the air with the force of a typhoon.

Wearing a skintight suit and visored helmet, she performs elaborate routines while suspended in a futuristic-looking perspex tunnel, riding winds topping 240 kilometres per hour (150mph).

The Singaporean teenager is one of the world’s leading figures in indoor skydiving, a niche sport that blends elements of disciplines such as dance, diving, acrobatics and figure skating to jaw-dropping effect.

Kyra swoops, pirouettes, flips, turns and dives in the narrow chamber, her body a blur as she is carried by air pulled upwards by giant turbines in the ceiling. The 17-year-old athlete has been training and competing since she was eight and is not only one of the youngest competitors in her sport, but one of only a few females when she began flying in 2010.

The teen fell into the sport by accident, after her mother Carolyn Teo’s advertising agency was hired to create adverts for the opening of the local indoor skydiving venue, iFly Singapore. A 10-minute taster led to Kyra being invited to fly during the tunnel’s opening ceremony “on my belly doing basic stuff” with a partner. Her interest snowballed from then on, and by 2012 she was competing regularly.

“Once I knew about this sport, I realised immediately it was what I wanted to do,” she says. “I wanted to be an astronaut when I was young so that I could be able to fly, but I don’t think I quite knew all the hardships astronauts face, and how long they have to train.”