Stearns insists that she's no daredevil. In an inherently risky sport, she eliminates the unnecessary risks. For instance, she opens her chute at around 2,500 feet, a higher altitude than more daring jumpers choose. "If I have a malfunction, I want to have those extra 500 feet to deal with the emergency," she says. "Remember, I can always lose altitude, but I can never gain it back."

As a Golden Knight, Stearns has parachuted into football stadiums and, once, around the points atop the crown of the Statue of Liberty, landing on Ellis Island. But in 1979, after being selected to be the first person to skydive into the Super Bowl, she "weathered out" moments before kickoff. The volatile winds over Miami could have made her landing unsafe. "If I'm scared in the plane, it means I don't like what's happening on the ground. So I won't do it. There's always tomorrow."

If you don't run an emergency, it will run you.

Just before she jumps out of a plane, Stearns thinks about what could go wrong. This isn't last-minute panicking on her part. She's preparing herself for problem solving in midair.

The idea is to be so prepared that when a situation arises, you're solving a familiar problem, not a new one. Once Stearns is free-falling, there's no time to figure things out. "Time is against you," she says. "When you go to release your chute at 2,000 feet and it doesn't open, you have 10 seconds before you hit the ground. You have to deal with the problem immediately. But the last thing you want to do is panic. You need to stay calm and get your reserve chute, but you also need to be aware of time. You have to think fast and slow at the same time."

Skydiving is like other activities in that most mistakes occur when you're in a hurry, Stearns says. It's when you're running to make the plane for another jump that you're apt to get sloppy and pack your chute improperly or forget something. Of course, the difference is that this sport doesn't offer much room for error.

That's not to say that you can't be fast and safe. When Stearns set the 24-hour record, she was running to another plane as soon as she landed. But she had practically choreographed every step ahead of time. There were five planes, 12 parachutes, and 120 people working through the night. Stearns, who had done 400 lat pulldowns a day to build up arm strength for operating her chute almost continuously, could focus solely on jumping. The result: Ninety-one percent of her landings were within one centimeter of the target center, and 52% were bull's-eyes.

Train hard, but don't overdo it.

The paradox of skydiving, or of any dangerous sport, is that you only improve by doing it over and over, but repetition can lull you into carelessness. One reason that Stearns has been able to perform at a world-class level for more than 20 years (she won her first world title at 23) is that she concentrates so much on concentrating. "Eighty percent of skydiving is mental," she says. "To make a good jump, you need to have a positive attitude. If you have any outside problems or negative thoughts, like remembering a previous bad jump, you're going to be distracted, and then you're not going to do well. The key is really knowing yourself, knowing how to keep a positive mind-set no matter what's going on or what kind of day you're having."

These days, Stearns practices three or four times a week. Along with her training, she makes sure to mix in jumps that are purely for fun -- she doesn't want the work to diminish the exhilaration and joy in skydiving. She'll open her chute at 10,000 feet and fly for miles or do back flips over and over during free fall. "I'll flip until I don't know whether I'm down or up," she says. "But all I have to do is stick my chest out, and I'm stomach to earth."

After more than 14,000 jumps, perhaps the greatest danger for Stearns is relaxing too much. She maintains her focus by reminding herself that each jump is different. She logs each one in a notebook to prove it. On jump number 75, she had her first malfunction and had to cut away the main chute and activate the reserve. On jump number 9,517, she scored a bull's-eye in China, earning the world title in 1994. And today, on jump number 14,195, she left the plane at 10,500 feet and practiced a set of right spins. The log is a way of charting her performance and a way of reminding herself that each skydive demands full concentration to avoid any lapses or mistakes. "This is a very unforgiving sport," she says. "All it takes is one."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Learn more about Cheryl Stearns on the Web (www.cherylstearns.com; www.stratoquest.com), or contact her by email (cherylstearns@mindspring.com).

Sidebar: Out of This World