At its summer 2020 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, the USPA Board of Directors voted to bestow Kurt Gaebel, D-18635, with the organization’s Gold Medal for Meritorious Service. USPA presents this prestigious award to a maximum of three recipients per year who “by their efforts over a period of years, have made significant contributions to the skydiving community.” As the founder and operator of the National Skydiving League—which has broadcast formation skydiving news and promoted regional competitions in the U.S. and around the globe since 1998—Gaebel’s positive contribution to the sport cannot be overstated.
Gaebel began skydiving in his native Germany in May of 1980 at a drop zone four hours away from his home in Berlin. Then a semi-pro soccer player (“beer in my blood and a soccer ball glued to my foot”), he tried to stay involved in both sports. But after a year of juggling the two—and one weekend where he almost missed a Sunday soccer game—he decided he loved skydiving more than anything else and devoted himself to the sport.
In 1981, Gaebel joined his first 4-way formation skydiving team. He attended his first German National Championships with his 4-way team in 1982, and in 1985, he attended his first world championships in both 4-way and 8-way. But he missed being able to compete more frequently, as he had in soccer, where there was a game every weekend.
As Gaebel got more deeply involved in the sport, he began traveling back and forth from Florida to load organize and train. He also began doing work for canopy manufacturer Performance Designs. (Little known fact: He came up with their tag line “dream of flight.”) He met his future wife and mother of his three children at PD, and moved to the U.S. for good in 1993. A full-time skydiver, Gaebel coached formation skydiving and competed for the U.S. (He was on DeLand VNE, which represented the U.S. in 4- and 8-way at the 1996 Fédération Aéronautique Internationale World Cup in Belgium.)
Even though he now had plenty of sunny Florida days in which to skydive, he found the same problem in the U.S. as he found in Germany—there weren’t many competitions. So, he began devoting himself to providing skydivers with greater opportunities to hone their skills and test them by launching the Florida Skydiving League in the winter of 1996-1997. Then in 1998, Texas and Georgia joined, and Gaebel founded the National Skydiving League. Soon, even more states signed on, and regional skydiving competitions began to spread across the U.S. The NSL now has 20 local organizations that run formation skydiving meets, and Gaebel still personally runs and coaches NSL events in Florida.
Although the NSL has never had an official relationship with USPA and Gaebel has never been on the USPA staff, his efforts to promote skydiving in the United States have resulted in great benefit to USPA members. Formation skydiving is by far the most popular event at the USPA Nationals year in and year out, and it’s safe to say that many of those competitors got their spark to compete nationally while attending an NSL event. And it would be difficult to find a Nationals competitor who had not attended a local NSL competition during their training season. When he accepted his award, Gaebel remarked, “I’ve always been so grateful that USPA was there because they are doing the things I did not want to do … insurance, politics, etc. This allowed me to just run my meets and focus on competition.”
In addition, the news wing of the NSL is the one-and-only regular source of in-depth formation skydiving news worldwide. The NSL covers more than 120 events—spanning from local meets to world championships—during a typical year. Gaebel personally attends high-profile events across the globe to connect directly with competitors, share stories and inspire a new generation. FS rookies and world champions alike visit the NSL news website regularly … it is the sole central archive of competition scores and news from meets big and small.
Fittingly, Gaebel received his Gold Medal for Meritorious Service following the 4-way formation skydiving medal ceremonies at October’s USPA National Skydiving Championships at Skydive Arizona in Eloy. USPA Executive Director Albert Berchtold delivered the framed gold medal to the stage for presentation by Niklas Hemlin and Mikhail Markine of Arizona Airspeed, the team that moments earlier had been crowned U.S. National Champion of 4-Way Formation Skydiving. Both Hemlin and Markine expressed what Gaebel meant to the FS community and how they both were personally influenced by his contributions. Gaebel was visibly honored and humbled by receiving the medal, the citation on which reads, “For connecting and inspiring formation skydivers in the U.S. and worldwide by hosting competitions, providing news coverage and promoting the sport through the National Skydiving League for 20-plus years.”