posted Jul 25th, 2009 - The Nuggets Cup in Germany has the first scores on this weekend's leaderboard. As expected, FSC Eisenach and EADS are not competing, however, it is a quite interesting start, as the young all-female Incognito Leutkirch lineup is shaking up the standard situation in Germany so far. The challenger of the female national team, Chicas, is not only one point ahead of the target, Incognito is also tied in first place with X-Ray Remscheid after two rounds. The NSL News will update the leaderboard as soon as new scores are available.

In the meantime, the NSL News goes back to the World Games 2009 where the original Arizona Airspeed Odyssey lineup extended the team's undefeated run to 18 - 0 last week.

The Belgian national team of many years, Hayabusa Defence, finished only in 4th place with a 23.8 average after the five rounds in Taiwan. It was the first international competition since 2007 where Hayabusa did not win a medal. The team won the gold medal at the World Cup 2007 in Russia and then the bronze medal at the World Meet 2008 in France.

Hayabusa Defence brought Waedong So as the new Point into the lineup after the World Meet 2008. The three other Hayabusa members, brothers David and Andy Grauwels and Roy Janssen, had to move to new slots when former Center Inside Luc Verstrepen stepped back last year. Waedong So still has to win his first international medal after missing it by two points in Taiwan. The next opportunity is the FAI World Cup 2009.

Roy Janssen provided once again a summary of the Hayabusa experience in Taiwan for the NSL News. Airspeed's Craig Girard had already sent scores, comments and photos for a very neutral report from the World Games 2009. The Hayabusa report reflects on the event more from the team's perspective.

The Hayabusa Defence members were looking forward to the event in Taiwan. Roy Janssen, David and Andy Grauwels had already attended the World Games 2005 in Germany and expected a similar international atmosphere of a major sports event. They were not disappointed:

"The atmosphere at the competition site was great. The organizing committee did a wonderful job by making it as comfortable as possible for the competitors. Many volunteers were gathered to help wherever they could."

The only downside was the actual competition environment for the 4-way teams in Taiwan. Lack of experience with skydiving events caused some difficulties that could easily interfere with the actual performance.

However, Roy Janssen acknowledged that all teams had to deal with the same challenges:

"The only things that were compromised were lift capacity, aircraft, landing area and a pilot who wasn't used to dropping parachutists.

Some additional other conditions made the competition more difficult than others, such as the heat and humidity, jetlag and long standby's between the jumps. But all these conditions were the same for everybody, and I guess this is a very good experience to have under the belt for future meets."

Roy Janssen confirmed what Craig Girard had already mentioned earlier: the teams were indeed surprised by the right-hand door for the exit from the helicopter.

They tried to get familiar with it, which turned out to be quite difficult for everybody. Some teams had more trouble with it, some less. Hayabusa Defence was hit very hard, as team videographer Danny Jacobs lost several points for the team:

"After the little surprise of the right-hand door, we started with the first training round to check out airspeed, climbout and hill work. Most of it seemed to be okay, but we struggled already to get it all on camera."

It got worse for Hayabusa, as there was only one training jump available for all teams, which is not enough to work on a serious problem. The Belgian team eventually lost a total of ten points in the 5-round meet.

The video troubles did not help the team's confidence level, while Danny Jacobs suffered the most. The Hayabusa blog from Taiwan shows some frustration in the middle of the battle for exit points:

"Pff, what a bad feeling we have, okay, no blame to Danny, we know very well, that he is trying his stinky best. Not 100 but 200%. But it doesn't turn out like we want it. We are skydiving normal, no brainlocks, no funnels, even a glitch is hard to find; but we just don't get what we deserve. The French go up side down in the exit, lose 4-5 seconds and still beat us with 1 point. The Russians only lose 1 point in their exit...."

The frustration was easy to understand at that point. Hayabusa tied Airspeed in Round 1 for the first lead and then lost three points in Round 2, another three points in Round 3 and even four points in Round 4. Roy Janssen explained the same situation looking back at it a week after the meet:

"The first competition round went smoothly for us, good jump and great video by Danny. Unfortunately, the next jumps were harder for us to get on camera. In total, we lost ten points due to video busts over five rounds, which is very unusual for Danny.

We didn't perform very well in Round 2 and Round 3, where we started a bit too slow during the subterminal and lost some ground compared to the top contenders. I guess we didn't had enough confidence yet to start with a fast pace. We understood the problem and solved it in Round 4."

Eventually, Hayabusa Defence ended up in a desperate situation after Round 4. The 6-point difference to France Maubeuge seemed to make it impossible to get to a medal position.

However, the Belgian team was far from giving up and was ready to gamble, as Roy Janssen explained:

"After Round 4, we had to try to make it up with the random jump. So far, we did only Sidebody (P) exits, but we had to take a higher risk if we wanted to catch up with the French team. We launched the Star (M) straight, but it didn't worked out well out of the helicopter, and we lost some time. The sequence wasn't as fast as it might seem. The fact that there are a lot of changes of direction in the sequence slows it down more than we expected. The scores prove it, as well."

Hayabusa still posted the second highest score for the fast round with the 41-pointer. Airspeed tied the standing Russian world record of 44 points in the same round.

Hayabusa got closer to France Maubeuge and still ended up two points behind in 4th place. Roy Janssen and his team were not disappointed:

"We had to overcome setbacks and tried to fight back as much as possible. I think we kept our heads up. Even though we came here to win a medal, and we are of course disappointed to end up in fourth place, we came out stronger and will surely use this experience in the future. All compliments to Airspeed who gave a lesson in skydiving. Once again, they showed to be the strongest team, but we are out there to make a move as soon as we can!"