posted Jul 19th, 2009 - The weather has obviously improved for the World Games 2009 in Koahsiung, Taiwan, as two rounds have been completed. Arizona Airspeed is in total control of the competition at the end of Sunday.

It has been very difficult to get information from the competition site in Taiwan, as the official website of the World Games does not offer any details. The NSL News is very fortunate to receive information from supporters of the sport at the competition site. Eventually, even the scores of the first two rounds have now become available, and they have to be considered unofficial, of course.

Airspeed's performance in the first two rounds does probably not surprise too many people, as the reigning world champions are still considered the best team in the world in all current NSL News polls. However, the clear dominance after only two rounds is still surprising.

It is also a surprise that the Russian Sky Panthers are the strongest opponent for Airspeed so far. In fact, the Russian team is already as far ahead of Hayabusa Defence (4) and France Maubeuge (5) as Airspeed is of the team in 2nd place.

The Sky Panthers have not trained much with team founder Michail Kuznetsov at all this year. Vladimir Pavlenko, Oleg Shalamykhin and Sergej Shenin have been training and competing with alternate Leonid Kazinets in 2009.

Michail Kuznetsov competed with the team at the World Meet 2008 in France, then took time off, and Leonid Kazinets stepped in for his turn with Skylight Barkli.

Hayabusa Defence's 2009 lineup with new member Waedong So in the Point slot is holding off France Maubeuge so far and has the bronze medal position after two rounds. Hayabusa was able to keep up with Airspeed in Round 1 and tied the 22-pointer highscore for the round. The reason for the 8-point difference in Round 2 is unknown at the moment.

It will be interesting to find out which impact the unexpected switch to the helicopter's right-hand door had on the scores after two rounds. Craig Girard reported earlier for the NSL News that the teams did not know about this before arriving at the competition site.

The first scores are posted, and the best six teams of last year's World Championship of Formation Skydiving are now in the middle of the battle. Plan is to start even earlier tomorrow morning and make up for the lost time due to the weather.

There are four more rounds to go, and the remaining sequences include the superfast sequence of only random formations in Round 5. The current Airspeed lead of four points is significant after two rounds. However, it can diminish easily in Round 5. The two Russian teams who own the current world record of 44 points have already shown that Russian 4-way competitors seem to like the fast sequences. The Sky Panthers will have the next opportunity coming up soon.