posted Jul 18th, 2009 - It is actually an amazing feast that is being presented to the whole world and to the skydiving community at the World Games 2009 in Taiwan.

The best six teams of the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2008 in France are in fact at the competition site, and they are all registered with the same lineups that they competed with last year. Hopefully the weather and the management of the event will cooperate and make this a great show for skydiving.

It gets even better by looking at the competition draw. There is a very good chance that the World Games 2009 will be the event where the current 4-way world record for a single round will fall. Round 5 has a sequence of only random formations: M-K-D-H-B.

The standing world record was posted by two Russian teams in Round 10 of the Malevsky Cup 2006 in Stupino, Russia. The NSL News was live on site and reported the event and the world record to the skydiving community.

The two 44-pointers came with a sequence of only random formations, as well: H-O-B-Q-E. Extreme.RU (Vladimir Akopov, Alexander Tychinsky, Nikolai Vylegzhanin, Sergey Yalpaev) had the 44-pointer on the Omniskore screen first.

Black Cat (Mikhail Minaev, Vasily Korotkov, Alexander Kvochur, Evgeny Staschenko) tied the 44-pointer a few minutes later, which is now already three years old.

It is difficult to imagine that the current world record will survive Round 5 in Taiwan. Both Russian teams did not even compete at the World Meet in 2006. Sky Panthers was the Russian national team by then, as it still is. Sky Panthers ended up only in 4th place a few weeks earlier in Germany and did not compete at the Malevsky Cup. Sky Panthers will now have their turn to go after the world record for a single round.

Arizona Airspeed's Mark Kirkby is the only 4-way competitor at the World Games who had his turn already at the Malesvky Cup 2006 and witnessed it when Extreme.RU and Black Cat posted their 44-pointers. He competed with Team Fastrax by then and ended up with a 36-pointer for the world record sequence.

Three years have gone by, and the best teams in the world are performing better than ever, especially at fast sequences with random formations. The wind tunnel training has sharpened the skills and increased the pace. Six of the best teams in the world are in Taiwan and ready to eliminate the 44-pointer as the official world record.

Craig Girard updated the NSL News once again from Taiwan after the first official day of the competition was over. He said that the Freeflying event completed one round. Norway is in 1st place, Babylon in 2nd and the UK team in 3rd place. One round is also complete in Canopy Relative Work where USA holds the 1st and Russia the 2nd place. The Canopy Pilots were still working on the completion of the first round on Friday.

The 4-way event has begun. Arizona Airspeed and France Maubeuge made their first competition jumps. Craig Girard said that Round 1 was not completed on Friday. This is the reason why no scores have been available at this point in time. He said that it has been difficult to get the helicopters in the air quickly, and the teams have been limited to one jump per day so far.

The NSL News will follow up with more news from Taiwan as soon as more information is available.