posted May 10th, 2015 - The Sun Path Products NSL News posted the first part of Oleg Shalamykhin's own memories of his deceased team mate Nikolay Vylegzhanin with the story on May 4th.

The second part of the memories now covers the time when Nikolay Vylegzhanin started his family life and soon became a professional skydiver.

Oleg Shalamykhin was not in the same team with Nikolay Vylegzhanin during this time period. However, they spent a lot of time together when their teams were in training and competition. Oleg Shalamykhin was with the Sky Panthers and Barkli while Nikolay Vylegzhanin continued with other Russian top teams.

NIKOLAY VYLEGZHANIN - Written by Oleg Shalamykhin

Nikolay met his wife Oksana In 1996, and they had their daughter Ekaterina two years later. His competition career was also advancing, as he won the 8-way nationals with his team and became a champion of the Russian Federation.

The same year, Russia won the 8-way competition of the European Championship at the World Cup in Eloy, Arizona.

His 8-way team won again won in 2001. He also won a silver medal in 4-way, together with Sergey Yalpaev, Vasily Korotkov and Evgeniy Stashenko.

The end of the 2001 season was the beginning of the Russian era of professional teams. Nikolay joined Wild Wind, with Vladimir Ostanin, Alena Chistova and Sergey Yalpaev. Wild Wind was sponsored by Aleksandr Utkin and Andrey Barabash and competed with the Russian top teams. Wild Wind eventually won the national championships in 2003 and competed for Russia at the World Meet 2003 in France.

Malevsky Cup 2006			Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class		D 9 K 4	15 5 18	1 7 19	J 14 P N	6 22 17	3 8 C	16 L 13	A G 2 11	20 10 21	H O B Q E	Total	Avg
1	Black Cat		27	19	22	28	21	20	20	22	17	44	240	24.0
2	France		29	18	20	24	19	19	21	22	17	40	229	22.9
3	Fastrax		23	18	19	25	17	20	18	21	15	36	212	21.2
4	Extreme.RU		21	17	17	23	17	18	18	20	15	44	210	21.0

Nikolay Vilegzhanin and Sergey Yalpaev then joined the leading Russian 4-way team Extreme.ru in 2004. Two years later, at the Malevsky Cup 2006, they set a new 4-way world record for a single round with 44 points. Alexander Tichinsky and Vladimir Akopov were their Extreme.ru team mates.

His team had a new sponsor in 2007. Dmitry Fridman replaced Vladimir Akopov and joined the team's active lineup. Crossroad was the new team name, and the lineup continued until 2009.

With the era of commercial teams our lives changed. We were paid good salaries to do what we loved the most – skydiving. We held training camps overseas, we started to train our first students and were then coaching the young teams. Many things changed in the sport, in our minds as well as in our personal lives. Nikolay wasn’t an exception. He and Oksana separated and divorced. However, until his last days they maintained their friendship.

After a few years of loneliness, Nikolay got his second chance to be happy. His new wife's name is Tatyana, and she gave birth to his two daughters Kristina and Alisa. Recently, after he passed away, their third daughter was born, only a few days after her father’s birthday.

Back to his skydiving career - being in a professional team did not fill Nikolay's whole life. He added another way how to follow his visions and began with the training to become a wind tunnel instructor.

Due to his hard work and energy, Nikolay soon became one of the top instructors in the Freezone wind tunnel near Moscow. He also started soon with freeflying and advanced quickly. Up to now, he is still regarded as the only skydiver in Russia who had good skills in Formation Skydiving, as well as in Freeflying.

To be continued...