posted Oct 10th, 2018 - The 4-way Open Class competition could not be any more exciting than it is after Round 8. It is almost a miracle how Arizona Airspeed managed to come back into gold medal contention after the nightmare in Round 1.

It was a 6-point difference that the challenger had to deal with, and it seemed already hopeless after only one round. Airspeed performed on eye level with NMP PCH HayaBusa in the following three rounds, which was a little surprise in itself and should have been a warning for the defending world champions from Belgium.

Next happened what seemed to be inevitable at this point in time, as Airspeed had gained confidence with each round that they tied the HayaBusa scores. The U.S. team won the first round by two points, while HayaBusa stumbled through Round 5 after three point deductions.

The Belgians recovered professionally with the 62-pointer world record in Round 6, which seemed to put Airspeed back in place. But no, it was HayaBusa stumbling again and collecting a total of eight penalties in the last four rounds, which opened the door for Airspeed to come back - which they did.

The incredible 4-way battle for the gold medals in 4-way Open may take away the attention for other events. The Aerodyne Weembi Girls are still and clearly in the bronze medal position of the 4-way Open Class leaderboard. The gold medals in 4-way Women are not even an issue for the French team.

Also, there is still the potential world record sequence coming up in Round 10 of the 8-way competition. The weather situation is unexpectedly favorable, even though the forecast did not seem to allow much competition on Thursday on the east coast of Australia.

Golden Knights and Russia's Tanay team are both in great shape, even though the 8-way world champions from the United States are ahead by nine points after Round 8. Both teams posted great scores for the fast sequence with only random formations in Round 6.

However, the sequence of Round 10 is probably even the better one, with three of the fastest blocks in the 8-way dive pool. The FAI World Meet 2018 could be concluded with a new 8-way world record in the last jump of the competition...