posted Jul 23rd, 2009 - Arizona Airspeed had the headline on 15 July 2009, as the World Games 2009 were just about to begin in Taiwan. However, the story opened with an overview of this year's national championship in Denmark.

The DaneZ had once again successfully defended the 4-way title, even though they had already retired as Denmark's official national 4-way team after the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2006 in Germany. Voluntas is the new national A-Team and has shown great progression since the team was formed at the end of the 2008 season.

Voluntas started into the 2009 season with a 14.8 average at the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2009 and competed at the World Challenge 2009 a few weeks later. The DFU Cup in Denmark brought a 15.6 average after ten rounds in May, and Voluntas finished at the Danish Nationals 2009 with a 16.8 average.

This sounds quite impressive, and it really is. It was still not enough to send the Danez lineup into the second line this year. Earlier this year, it looked as if Voluntas was on the way to do just that, as the NSL News story on 2 June 2009 explained. The new official national team had won the DFU Cup and beat the DaneZ by five points after ten rounds on the May 30 weekend.

Voluntas continued to train and successfully worked on the team's progression, as the scores at the Danish Nationals 2009 show. The problem was that the DaneZ were just not quite ready yet to give away their top position in Denmark.

It had been much easier for the Danez in the past to maintain the national top position. They beat Danish Blaze in 2007 (15.7 - 13.7) without a problem, and then again in 2008 (15.6 - 14.8) by a slightly smaller margin. However, the DaneZ were alarmed when they posted their usual 15+ average without any training jumps at the DFU Cup this year - and lost to Voluntas.

DaneZ veteran Mike Toft, who is now the happy father of baby twins, knew that things would be much tougher this year. He told the NSL News after the DFU Cup and before the Danish Nationals 2009 that he expected a good fight this year and that the Danez would be ready for it:

"This time, the competition in Denmark will be exciting as never before. Voluntas is doing really well in general, and the old boys DaneZ had a grat weekend in Bedford two weeks ago. We are better prepared than ever."

The DaneZ made 15 training jumps and completed two hours of indoor training at Bodyflight Bedford since the 2008 championships. Mike Toft was right, the DaneZ had to be well prepared, as the results have shown. They had to pull out everything they have at the moment to fend off Voluntas. In fact, this year's 17.4 average is not even too far away from the 18.0 average at the World Meet 2006 where the DaneZ were in full training.

Mike Toft followed up after the national championship and was impressed with the performance of all three Danish national teams (Voluntas, Sequence, Altius). Sequence, the official B-Team, finished with a 14.4 average and the best performance of the 2009 season (12.3 - 13.0 - 14.4) and placed 3rd.

Sequence showed in several rounds that the team has the potential to get to the same performance level of the two top teams. Vibeke Birk, Ulrik Hogsberg, Jesper Ruby and Torben Tiedemann posted the sole highscore for Round 3 and impressed the DaneZ and Voluntas, as Mike Toft explained:

"Sequence had their best jump in Round 4, with an almost perfect Block 6 and a nice Block 18, and outscored Voluntas and DaneZ. Unfortunately, Sequence had a bad start in Round 5 with the exit Block 19 not going well. They ended up with five point deductions. But they picked up the pace again later on."

He added more credit to the Voluntas performance who forced his team to give this competition full attention at the DaneZ' second reunion this year. Voluntas was even stronger than the numbers on the scoreboard have shown:

"Voluntas performed really well in Round 6 with an impressive 26-pointer. They had two NJs and one bust and ended up with 23 points, still one point higher than our score for this round. It looks very good for the Voluntas future."

Mike Toft said that there was a great competition spirit between all the teams. He said that this was the first time, as far as he can remember, that two Danish teams scored above 16+ average at the same competition. Finally, he was also happy with his own team's performance: "We are very satisfied with our performance."

The DaneZ will still not come out of the official retirement. Voluntas will compete for Denmark at the future events, while Sequence and Altius will work hard to learn and keep up with the progression of the national team.