posted May 14th, 2018 - The NSL News had reported the current 8-way situation in Germany with an update on 8 January 2018. The German skydiving federation had not sanctioned an 8-way team to compete for the country at the FAI World Meet 2018 in Australia at the time of the news update.

The Airbus 4-way team, with four other experienced competitors in their 8-way lineup, had also claimed the 8-way title at last year's national championships. However, the Airbus 4-way team decided in the meantime to compete only in one event in Australia.

The German skydiving federation had first set a qualification average of 12.5 for any other German 8-way team that would like to compete at the world meet, which was later increased to a 13.0 average.

The German qualification benchmark in 8-way was set at 12.5 until 2017 and then raised to 13.0 at a time after the Airbus 4-way team decided to compete only in one event. The new 8-way team that the NSL News introduced with the earlier story was hoping for a re-assignment to the 12.5 average which has not materialized until now. In fact, the German skydiving federation recently confirmed the higher 13.0 average requirement.

German 8-way participation at FAI World Meets between 1985 and 2018

The new 8-way team launched their training efforts despite any requirements and had completed the first indoor training when the earlier update was posted.

Germany has missed only three world meets in the modern era of 8-way competition since 1985 and has ranked between last (1985) and four 4th places (1997 - 2004 - 2008 - 2012) in the same time period.

The German skydiving federation had concentrated the available resources only on the 4-way event at the three world meets where a German 8-way team was not present (1989 - 2010 - 2014), even though the 4-way teams were not near medal contention.

The members of the German national 4-way teams have also been competing in 8-way at the world meets since 2008. Different teams competed in both events at the world meets in 2003 (Gap, France), 2004 (Rijeka, Croatia) and last time in 2006 (Gera, Germany). All members of the current Airbus 4-way lineup are familiar with the challenge of double duties in training and competition, which eventually caused the decision to compete only in one event.

FAI World Meet 2016			1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open		12,A,16		18,15,O		1,F,E,C		17,B,14		10,2,20		21,11,G		J,5,19		L,M,K,7		D,8,4		3,13,Q		Total	Avg
1	Golden Knights	US	31		25		26	-1	22		20		22		19		26		24		24	-1	239	23.9
2	France	FR	22	-1	20	-1	25		18		16		19		17		23		19		20		199	19.9
3	Tanay	RU	23		19		25		17		14	-1	16		16		21		20		19		190	19.0
4	Qatar Falcons	QA	19		16		20		15		7	-2	10	-4	13		16	-1	15		15		146	14.6
5	Microclim8	UK	15		14	-1	16	-1	14		11		13		13		14	-1	13		17		140	14.0
6	Airbus München	DE	16		15		17		11		11		13		12		14		12		15		136	13.6
7	Australia	AU	13		13		14	-1	12		9	-1	13		12		15		10		14		125	12.5
8	Divergence	CA	11		10	-1	9	-2	11		8		10		8	-1	10		11		11		99	9.9
9	Brazil	BR	11		8	-1	10		9		5	-2	9		9		11		8		13		93	9.3

The new 8-way team, which is still running under the Airbus name, launched their 2018 training despite the uncertainty of the qualification status and has followed up with training jumps at outdoor camps after the indoor training at the beginning of the year.

The new Airbus 8-way team, without any members of the 4-way team, hired coach Marco Arrigo and began with the indoor training. The Italian 8-way coach was also with the team in Spain at the first outdoor training camp.

Marco Arrigo has been working together with French 8-way expert Martial Ferre for several years at the Veloce 8-way indoor project and took on coaching jobs with other 8-way teams, as well, indoor and outdoor. Recently he competed in 8-way with pickup team Jazz Dragons at the World Challenge 2018.

He is the reigning Italian 4-way champion with eX3MO and will compete for Italy at the FAI World Meet 2018 in Australia, where he hopes to meet the German 8-way team.

The Germans keep working on their 13+ average goal on weekends, and most of the times even with their coach at the training camps on home turf.

The German national championships are scheduled for the end of August, and there could be enough time to beat the average requirement in the actual meet environment - 50 seconds of freefall working time...