posted Mar 30th, 2008 - It is quite amazing how history repeats itself. Round 6, the first round of the second day at the World Challenge 2008, was almost exactly a copy of last year's event, at least on the top of the leaderboard.

Airspeed Odyssey came out of the gates with the strongest performance of the meet so far. The Arizona team has shown it so many times: Eliana Rodriguez, Craig Girard, Andy Delk and Mark Kirkby bring out their best when the challenge is at the highest point. No other team could keep up, including the leader after five rounds, XL.

Airspeed won the round by three points over the British/American pickup team, and the lead has changed for the first time at Bodyflight Bedford. Odyssey is now one point ahead of XL.

There is still a difference compared to last year's situation on Sunday morning, and it might be an important one. XL simply collapsed in Round 6 of the 2007 event and never came back to the performance level of the first day.

This time, Pete Allum, Steve Hamilton, Thomas Hughes and Brian Johnson still delivered on world-class level and had the second highest score of the round. There seems to be a much better chance that XL 2008 will recover and remain in contention for the first place. It is only one single point at the moment.

Unfortunately, the NSL News had to witness live a real meltdown. The NSL-TV camera followed Hayabusa Defence into the chamber on Sunday morning, and it was not a good time for the Belgian team. The official score of 22 points for the round threw the top contender for medals this year far behind the other teams on the top of the leaderboard. The NSL-TV video of Hayabusa's Round 6 can be viewed by clicking here.

The NSL News plans to discuss the 2008 situation and Hayabusa's recent experiences with coach Craig Girard in Arizona as soon as the meet is over and some extra time will be available. Stay tuned, Round 7 is in progress.