posted May 4th, 2009 - The NSL News covered the Pro Team from Finland and its 3-year plan with the story on 15 March 2009. The story was posted before the World Challenge 2009, which would show where the Pro Team begins the 2009 season. This year will feature a new race with archrival Tigers in Finland.

The latest scores on the NSL leaderboard came from Finland and were provided by Jukka Olkkonen, who judged the meet together with Raija Kosonen and Harry Latvala. The competition took place in Utti, a small town approx. 100 miles northeast of Helsinki. The teams jumped from a Cessna Caravan.

Jukka Olkkonen reported that the small meet was still very exciting: "The weather was perfect in Finland. However, we completed only five rounds, because there was so much other skydiving going on. The meet was a perfect example of how a competition can be interesting even when there is only a small number of teams participating. Even with three teams, we saw all kinds of drama just like in a bigger competition: nice busts, rejumps, denied rejumps, good prices etc. Everyone was pretty happy."

The Pro Team did not travel from their home town Rovaniemi on the arctic circle to the competition site in Utti. However, the scores from Finland brought the NSL News back to the earlier question where the Pro Team would start the 2009 season.

Laura Miettinen, Outi Pohjola, Kimmo Pohjola and Eiji Suvala must pe pleased with their results at Bodyflight Bedford. They already competed at the World Challenge 2008 where they placed 22nd of 30 teams in the AAA Class with a 17.6 average.

This year, they finished tied with the Italian team 3MD in 15th place of 37 AAA Class teams and posted a 19.5 average. The extremely clean performance with no point deductions at all clearly outscored the Danish national team Voluntas and brought the team from Finland even quite close to the Swedish team Evolution (20.1) in 14th place.

The Tigers did not compete at Bodyflight Bedford this year. They attended the indoor competition at the World Challenge 2008 and lost to the Pro Team.

However, the Tigers recovered strongly and won the national championship last year by four points over the Pro Team.

It was the second championship that the Tigers won in 2008. A few weeks earlier they had already won the Swedish national championship as a guest team by one point over Evolution. The Pro Team finished behind both teams in Sweden.

The Tigers then represented Finland at the World Meet 2008 in France and finished tied with Austria's Monkey Circus in 16th place with a 14.5 average, this time three points behind the Swedish national team Evolution.

The scores of the World Challenge 2009 indicate that Sweden and Finland will have another good race for the upper hand in Scandinavia this year.

The teams of both countries may also be closer to Norway than ever before, as Arcteryx is taking a break and new lineups compete for Norway. Voluntas will also be in a generally closer race for the unofficial Scandinavian championship of 2009.

The Pro Team knows that the Tigers will be back for the outdoor action in 2009. Both teams have been pushing and challenging each other in the past years, and it brought them closer to the dominating Scandinavian teams from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

The Pro Team seems to be on track with the 3-year plan, and the Tigers have to watch out more than ever for the well trained challenger.