posted May 15th, 2015 - Russian 8-way world champion Oleg Shalamykhin provided the Sun Path Products NSL News with memories of his former 4-way and 8-way team mate Nikolay Vylegzhanin, who died in a BASE jump accident last year, shortly after competing at the FAI World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2014.

The first part of the biography was posted on May 4th and covered the beginnings of Nikolay Vylegzhanin's skydiving career. The second part on May 10th included the transition in Russia from state-sponsored national teams to professional skydivers after the fall of the socialistic economy. Oleg Shalamykhin and Nikolay Vylegzhanin both trained and competed in 4-way and 8-way throughout this transition.

Today's last part of the biography and Oleg Shalamykhin's memories presents Nikolay Vylegzhanin in the recent years of his skydiving career, when he was finally a member of the Russian national 4-way and 8-way teams and spent a lot of time together with Oleg Shalamykhin - until after the world meet in Prostejov last year.

NIKOLAY VYLEGZHANIN - Written by Oleg Shalamykhin

In 2010, Nikolay received an invitation from the 8-way team Barkli to join them, and a year later, he was also on the Barkli 4-way lineup. We were flying opposing slots in both teams, so we looked into each other's eyes all the time.

Both as a coach and an athlete, I always expected more from Nikolay than of the others. Seventeen years after I met him for the first time, we were finally in the same team, and I wanted to share with him the knowledge and experience our team had.

Sometimes I was a bit too hard on him, but it was just because I saw his desire to become a world champion, and I had a desire to share this dream with him. Formation Skydiving was the only subject I could teach him about. About anything else I couldn’t stop listening and learning from this unique man.

World Meet 2014			Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open		E,3,C,5	F,6,D,21	19,H,2	M,4,1	O,14,A,P	8,J,16	7,11,12	22,20,15	17,G,18	13,B,9	Total	Avg
1	NMP-PCH Hayabusa	BE	32	29	25	25	33	25	22	18	26	29	264	26.4
2	Arizona Airspeed	US	31	27	25	24	31	23	22	17	24	29	253	25.3
3	Evolution	CA	31	28	24	22	28	23	20	21	25	27	249	24.9
4	VoltR	FR	24	26	18	23	26	20	20	13	24	21	215	21.5
5	Barkli	RU	24	23	20	22	25	21	19	16	18	26	214	21.4

Beside skydiving and coaching in the wind tunnel Nikolay was fond of skiing, scuba diving, martial arts and shooting. He was reading every spare moment, and not many people know that Nikolay was writing poems. He was also an outstanding biker and had extensive knowledge about car mechanics.

One of his favorite hobbies was para-motoring and he was flying every morning at sunrise and at sunset after our training jumps. Nikolay liked to share his knowledge and skills about para-motoring, and soon our fellow skydivers Alexey Minaev and Leonid Kazinets joined him and became para-motor pilots themselves.

I was always struck by Nikolay’s phenomenal capacity to work. He could wake up at sunrise to fly his Para-motor, then he would do his morning exercise routine, finish our ten training jumps with the 8-way team, and afterwards he continued jumping and coaching junior 4-way teams. Then he would finish the day by flying the para-motor until the sun went down, hop on his bike and ride back to his family or to the wind tunnel to have some coaching sessions. He would back at the DZ before sunrise ready to start his day again...

World Meet 2014		Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	Rd. 11	T.	Avg
Rank	8-way Open	E,3,C,5	F,G,D,21	19,H,2	M,4,1	O,14,A,P	8,J,16	7,11,12	22,20,15	17,G,18	13,B,9	Q,10,N,L	T.	Avg
1	Golden Knights	24	22	15	26	22	21	19	26	21	20	-	216	21.6
2	Barkli	19	18	13	25	14	16	16	19	18	13	20	191	17.4
3	Venturi	19	16	14	23	18	13	18	19	15	16	19	190	17.3

Nikolay was an incredible man who would always find time to pay attention to every person who approached him. And there were many!

People would ask advice from Nikolay about anything, starting with Formation Skydiving or Freeflying and finishing with breathing techniques, or which good book to read. He would never refuse to help. It is hard to believe that one human-being can have so much energy, inner power and love to share with everyone. It was Nikolay’s phenomenon and enigma.

His life wasn’t long, but it was as bright as a shooting star, and Nikolay left an eternal mark in the memories of the people who had the privilege to know him. Now that I cannot ask him another question, can’t tell him a joke, give him a hug or share another skydive, I am just grateful that on such a big planet I had the privilege to call him Friend.