posted Jan 15th, 2009 - The first visit in Florida for last year's participation at the Shamrock Showdown in DeLand motivated the French national team, France Maubeuge, to consider a winter training at the same place.

The plans materialized when national coach Jerome David supported the move from Arizona to Florida and even added the winter training of the female lineup, Deep Blue, to the schedule of the French delegation.

The first of two training camps in DeLand began last week, and the NSL News did not hesitate to use the opportunity for live interviews with both teams. The first meeting with the complete Open Class lineup took place yesterday in the NSL office. The Deep Blue members accepted the invitation, as well, and will hopefully visit the NSL office today. The availability of teams during their training camps always depends on the weather situation and the flow of the training day.

France Maubeuge plans to complete 120 training jumps during this first winter camp and has 12 jumps per day on the agenda. The live interview began with the viewing and debriefing of one of Wednesday's training jumps. The NSL-TV camera captured the team's short review and a few remarks in French before the actual interview was filmed live in the NSL office.

Unfortunately, Jeremie Rollet was cut out of the picture throughout a major portion of the interview, and NSL-TV apologizes for the camera flaw. The microphone worked all the time though, and the team's center inside can be heard just as well as his team mates. The video of the complete interview can be viewed by clicking here.

The new videographer for France Maubeuge, Fabrice Rieu, was also in the NSL office. He kindly provided two training videos of the same day for NSL-TV. Fabrice Rieu was filming Deep Blue in 2008 and is now in charge of the Open Class videos. Coach Marin Ferré was still debriefing with Deep Blue when the interview with France Maubeuge took place. He promised to join the NSL-TV meeting with the female lineup or visit the NSL office later by himself.

The four 8-way world champions of 2006 and 2008 spent almost 20 minutes to patiently answer the NSL News questions. It was not as easy as usual on both sides since the English language was not the first language for anybody in the NSL office at that time. However, the France Maubeuge members provided a lot of insights for the NSL News audience.

The NSL News had already reported on 29 December 2008 how the French national lineups for the next two years would look like. The Maubeuge members confirmed this information and are convinced that the new 8-way lineup is strong and talented and will eventually get to the same performance level where they finished in 2008.

One 4-way member, the older of the Bernier brothers, Mathieu, who flies the point position in 4-way and in 8-way, continues to train and compete in both events. He explained that his job as a French policeman allows him to get as much time off as he needs for training and competition. The French government supports the French top athletes in sports by paying the normal salary, even for significantly extended vacation time.

Jeremie Rollet has a government job, as well. However, he will train and compete only in 4-way.

Mathieu's younger brother Guillaume Bernier (Tail) and Julien Degen (Center Outside) both work in the skydiving business and have less time available for training and competition. The three leaving 8-way members said that they look forward to focus only on 4-way after four years together in the 8-way event.

All four members of the 4-way lineup have actually been together for five years already, as they shared preparation time for the big jobs in the French national B-Teams. They did only 8-way for two years until winning the gold medals in 2006. Then they added 4-way to the agenda and won gold in 8-way and silver in 4-way last year. The concentration on 4-way until 2010 is supposed to make it easier to challenge Airspeed Odyssey and Hayabusa Defence for their first 4-way gold medals.

Coach Marin Ferré mentioned already before the interview that his Open Class team has scheduled significantly more windtunnel time for training than ever before. Mathieu Bernier, Guillaume Bernier, Julien Degen and Jeremie Rollet did not like tunnel training that much. However, they have changed their minds now and completed already eight hours of tunnel training at Bodyflight Bedford since November.

The World Challenge 2009 is one of the major events for France Maubeuge this year, and the team wants to perform well at the indoor competition. Four more hours in Bedford before the event are scheduled so far. It will be the second time that France Maubeuge will meet Airspeed Odyssey in 2009. Both teams will also compete at the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2009 in DeLand.

The Maubeuge members told the NSL News that the team is currently working on the slower sequences. Jeremie Rollet explained for the NSL News that the best teams in the world are scoring 20-pointers, even for the slowest sequences in the dive pool. He said that his own team is not very good in this area so far.

The competition between Airspeed Odyssey and France Maubeuge has been very tight in this specific area. Both teams competed together at three meets in 2008, FSL Shamrock Showdown 2008, World Meet 2008 and USPA Nationals 2008.

The competition draw of the Shamrock Showdown had four 3-block sequences. Each team won one of these four rounds, and they tied the other two rounds. The lowest scores were a 17-pointer for Airspeed and an 18-pointer for Maubeuge.

The eight rounds at the world meet in Maubeuge had two rounds with 3-block sequences. The French team won both, not considering any penalties. The lowest scores were a 17-pointer for Maubeuge and a 15-pointer in the last round for Airspeed.

Both teams met again at the USPA Nationals, which had only one round with a 3-point sequence. Airspeed won 20 to 19. Round 7 was actually the slowest round of the competition in Eloy, and Maubeuge won that one 20 to 18.

There was a time period in 2007/2008 when Airspeed Odyssey never scored below 20 points at a competition. This incredible series started with Round 10 of the Shamrock Showdown in March, included the Malevsky Cup in July, the Paraclete XP Money Meet in July, the USPA Nationals in September and ended after 35 outdoor rounds with 20-pointers or higher at Round 5 of the Valentines Meet 2008.

However, these 35 rounds had only four 3-block sequences in all of the competition draws, while the three meets between Maubeuge and Airspeed in 2008 brought a total of seven 3-point sequences to the table.

The NSL News plans to get together with the French national team again at the end of this training camp for a new update.