posted Sep 6th, 2017 - The 2017 season has been a good one for the French national team in 4-way Open, RealFly-Sion, so far.

The NSL News reported on 11 February 2017 that RealFly-Sion was the most improved team at the Wind Games 2017. They had outscored NMP PCH HayaBusa in two of the ten rounds and beat the 30.0 indoor benchmark for the first time.

Laurence Herve, Damien Gouriou, Kevin Mansion and Charles Rommel had to allow the French Weembi Girls to score and place higher at the French Indoor Nationals 2017 and the World Challenge 2017 while they began to focus more on the team's outdoor performance.

RealFly-Sion will not compete for France at the FAI Indoor World Meet in October, where the Weembi High Rollers (Julien Degen, Roy Janssen, Mathieu and Guillaume Bernier) are on the 4-way Open Class leaderboard for France. It made only sense for RealFly-Sion to pay more attention to the outdoor performance.

FAI World Cup 2017			1	2	3	4	(5)	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open - Top 10		L,O,F,K,11	C,3,7	13,2,G	1,17,20	(5,E,21)	Total	Avg
1	NMP PCH HayaBusa	BE	35	26	21	20	(28)	102	25.5
2	RealFly-Sion	FR	35	26	20	20	(23)	101	25.3
3	SDC Rhythm XP	US	33	24	20	16	(-)	93	23.3
4	Black Cat	RU	26	24	17	18	(24)	85	21.3
5	bUSA Defiance	US	26	22	16	17	(19)	81	20.3
6	Airbus	DE	27	21	17	15	(19)	80	20.0
7	Espoir Saumur Weembi	FR	25	19	16	18	(16)	78	19.5
8	Papea Masculino	ES	26	19	12	14	(18)	71	17.8
8	ISR FireFlash	BE	24	18	14	15	(19)	71	17.8
8	Barguzin	RU	24	15	17	15	(19)	71	17.8

The NSL News had the opportunity to meet the French national team for a live NSL Talk in Bedford, where they confirmed their highest goal: gold medals at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2018 in Australia.

There is obviously a very large obstacle in the way before any 4-way Open Class team in the world can get to the top position. NMP PCH HayaBusa will not make it easy for any team to take away the William H. Ottley Sword for Formation Skydiving Competition, also known as the Excalibur, that has been in Belgium since 2014.

However, one of the earlier updates from the NSL News live coverage of the FAI World Cup 2017 was published when the French national team was tied with HayaBusa after the first two rounds.

It was not only an average performance of the Belgian 4-way indoor and outdoor world champions that allowed France to keep up. The progression of the French national team has continued, and it did not become any easier for HayaBusa in the following two rounds. RealFly-Sion was only one single point behind after Round 4, which was also the event's official finish line in Saarlouis.

The official finish line does not reflect the real picture at this point in time, as HayaBusa was showing in Round 5 what happens when the team has a good round, even though Round 5 was below average for France at the same time.

The 25.3 average for the official four rounds is the promising indicator for the French Formation Skydiving delegation.

The scoring numbers of all other teams indicate that the 4-round average seems to be quite close to a realistic 10-round average. The mixture of the first four sequences was apparently similar to a complete draw with the whole dive pool.

The 25.3 is a new team record average and beats the previous 23.8 handily. RealFly-Sion is significantly ahead of the performance level at the FAI Mondial 2016 where the same lineup won the 4-way Open Class bronze medals.

France has shown that RealFly-Sion could make the next world meet a 4-way battle. Now it will be time for the U.S. teams to join the race for gold medals. SDC Rhythm XP and Arizona Airspeed first have their own qualification battle at the USPA Nationals 2017 in a few weeks, and NMP PCH HayaBusa will be witnessing it live in Perris...