CLEVELAND — Wet weather did not stop an annual Labor Day Weekend tradition in Northeast Ohio.
The Cleveland National Air Show is back for its 58th year, but it’s a soggy one this year, as rain postponed planes Sunday and prevented the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels from flying.
Officials with the show told Spectrum News “the show would go on” Monday, but declined to provide specifics about postponement or notification procedures.
The same set of performances were scheduled for each day of the three-day-long show, with Sunday ticket holders asked to return Monday in the hopes of better weather.
On the show’s social media, officials posted that performers have several routines they can perform depending on the conditions.
One group included in the show doesn’t fly through the sky, but falls.
“I love my job,” said Sgt. 1st Class Rafael Torres with the U.S. Army Golden Knights. “There’s nothing like jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Or at least what they say is a perfectly good plane.”
Torres is helping to challenge people’s perceptions of the U.S. Army.
“It’s not just you’re gonna go to training, go to your unit and just be training in the field,” he said. “There’s a lot of different opportunities that the Army actually provides.”
Those opportunities include skydiving with the Golden Knights, the military branch’s elite parachute unit.
“It’s very technical,” Torres said. “There’s a lot of training that goes into this. It also helps that you have a lot of jumps prior to coming through.”
Torres said each member of the team goes through a rigorous selection process, then weeks of intense training before becoming a part of the squad.
“If they have the drive and the motivation to do it, they can do it,” he said, of those aspiring to join the ranks.
Not to mention, each member has to have landed at least 75 civilian skydiving jumps before even applying. When they perform for crowds, Torres said the reaction from folks on the ground is usually mixed.
“Some people are so terrified for us, scared for us, you know?” he said. “Thinking we’re gonna get hurt, to the kids that are absolutely just blown out of their minds by the show itself.”
This is his first year on the team and he said his mom is not surprised he’s taken on these free-falling feats.
“Well, considering the fact that I’ve always been a daredevil since a kid, it was nothing new to her,” he said.
Torres said he hopes to keep jumping with the team until he retires from the service. He is currently in his 18th year with the Army.
