... that Airspeed's 2-point lead after Round 1 could be discouraging?
posted Aug 10th, 2008 -
Yesterday's training jumps are history. Round 1 is already in the bag, the teams are in the air for Round 2. However, it is always worth watching the best teams in the world, even if it's yesterday's news. The videos of the training jumps show what became partially true today.
NSL-TV has captured more videos from the DZ-TV screen, this time they are competition jumps of rounds one and two. There were obviously no big surprises in the 4-way Open competition. The top teams were all in the expected order, more or less, after Round 1.
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There are little changes compared to the most famous NSL World Meet polls. Hayabusa Defence is further behind after Round 1 than it was expected. The Belgium team was in second place at the latest poll, and there are now three points between Airspeed and Hayabusa after Round 1. France Maubeuge and Sky Panthers are both one point ahead and tied in second place. The Russian team was only in 4th place in the polls.
Arcteryx kept up with Hayabusa in Round 1, while Evolution lost contact with the top of the leaderboard. The top teams had glitches here and there, except Norway and Russia who performed clean and fast and confident.
Airspeed headquarters
It could be almost frustrating for the other top contenders to see that Airspeed Odyssey did not get through the first sequence without a serious glitch at the bottom. Airspeed still ended up with two more points than the second best team. The 30-pointer was the highscore for the round, and the Arizona team has a picture book start. They are at the spot after Round 1 where they were at the end of each competition ever since the team was founded - at the very top.
Where will it go from here? How do you catch a team that shows its impressive dominance already at the very beginning? Do the other top teams simply have to accept that they only compete for the silver medals? This was only one round, of course. However, the team that has been on the top at the end of each meet in the past two years has already a 2-point lead after one jump.
Ex3mo's training round at the World Meet 2008 - see video, more videos: Chicas
It will be interesting to see if any of the other top contenders will try to make a move in Round 2. The sequence is probably the fastest one of the competition. It might be the last chance to win a few points over Airspeed. It is unlikely that the US team will lose much ground in the more technical rounds.
Round 2 was not completed when it started to rain again in the late afternoon. Six teams moved on already, all the top teams will follow tomorrow morning. The teams in the female category are next then with their Round 2. The 8-way teams will try again at noon.
