posted Dec 14th, 2018 - The NSL News update on December 8th covered the 8-way competition at the Weembinamic 2018. The story concluded with the news that Jérémie Rollett was coaching the Qatar Falcons 8-way team at Weembi Lille.

It was not only the occasion of the event in France, near Jérémie Rollett's home in Paris, that connected the coach of the Qatar Tigers 4-way team with the Qatar Falcons. Jérémie Rollett and Falcons 8-way coach Gary Smith have switched jobs since the FAI World Meet 2018.

Both teams and their coaches are currently training at Skydive City in Florida, and the NSL News used the opportunity to meet with Jérémie Rollett and Gary Smith yesterday for a new NSL Live Talk.

Switching the jobs and responsibilities was not really very surprising for the two Qatar coaches. They said that they have discussed this option ever since they started working with Qatar's Formation Skydiving delegation. It did not happen earlier since both coaches have been very successful with their work. Gary Smith and the Qatar Falcons won the first FAI Formation Skydiving medals for their country with the 3rd place in 8-way at the FAI World Meet 2018, and Jérémie Rollett guided the Qatar Tigers to the 4th place in 4-way Open.

FAI World Meet 2018			1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open		21,L,B,G		22,18,17		19,7,O		J,16,12		10,A,D,15		Q,M,F,C,N		H,20,P,13		6,14,11		E,2,5		4,1,3		Total	Avg
1	Golden Knights	US	24		21		18		24		19	-2	29		21		18	-1	17		33		224	22.4
2	Tanay	RU	21	-1	21		17		22	-1	20		28		16	-1	18		18		28	-1	209	20.9
3	Qatar Falcons	QA	19		16		15		18	-1	14	-1	21		16		14	-1	14		23	-1	170	17.0
4	MicroClim8	UK	17		15		12		14	-1	15		21		15		12	-2	13		18	-1	152	15.2

FAI World Meet 2018			1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open		21,L,B,G		22,18,17		19,7,O		J,16,12		10,A,D,15		Q,M,F,C,N		H,20,P,13		6,14,11		E,2,5		4,1,3		Total	Avg
1	NMP-PCH Hayabusa	BE	32		21		27	-2	24		22	-3	62	-2	22	-2	20	-1	27	-1	22		279	27.9
2	Arizona Airspeed	US	26	-5	21		27	-1	24		24	-1	60	-1	26		22		27		20		277	27.7
3	Aerodyne Realfly	FR	29	-1	19		24	-2	23		24		52	-3	20	-3	17	-3	24		19		251	25.1
4	Qatar Tigers	QA	24	-2	14	-1	24	-1	21		22		53	-4	21	-1	18		20		17		234	23.4
5	Echochamber	SE	25	-1	16		21	-1	17	-2	20	-1	48	-4	14	-3	18		21	-1	15	-1	215	21.5

The new coaching jobs seem to make even more sense, despite the current success with their respective teams. Jérémie Rollett was even more successful as an 8-way competitor. He won FAI gold medals for France in 2006 and 2008 and then added 4-way gold in 2010.

He turned into coaching when he became the new French national coach after Jerome David retired with the French FS Sweep in 2010. Jérémie Rollett was in charge for the whole French Formation Skydiving delegation between 2011 and 2014.

He handed over the French national teams to his former team mate Mathieu Bernier in 2015 and continued with the Qatar Tigers.

Gary Smith won two 4-way world championship titles, the first one with DeLand Majik in 2004, followed by DeLand Fire in 2006. He became a professional coach after his active competition career and eventually guided NMP PCH HayaBusa to three consecutive world championship titles in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

He was also player coaching the Dutch national 8-way team M8trix until 2015 and met the Qatar Falcons 8-way team as opponents at a few meets. The Qatar Falcons eventually outscored M8trix at the team's last meet with Gary Smith and after he had started his new 8-way coaching job.

FAI World Cup 2015			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open		1,4,D	E,3,L,G	C,16,N,9	13,J,11	Q,2,A,14	K,7,8	P,18,21	15,12,F	B,22,O,10	20,5,M	Total	Avg
1	Aerodyne Maubeuge	FR	28	30	23	18	18	17	18	26	19	18	215	21.5
2	Tanay	RU	24	24	19	17	17	15	14	20	15	15	180	18.0
3	Qatar Falcons	QA	17	19	15	12	13	13	12	15	13	14	143	14.3
4	M8trix	NL	20	17	15	12	11	11	13	17	12	11	139	13.9
5	Ex3energy	IT	11	10	12	9	8	9	11	11	10	8	99	9.9
6	Awkward Turtles	UK	7	4	5	6	3	6	5	2	4	4	46	4.6

Jérémie Rollett has been focusing exclusively on his 4-way coaching job with the Qatar Tigers since 2015 and finished in 5th place a year later at the FAI World Meet 2016. Then he guided them to the 4th place in Australia this year.

In the same time period, Gary Smith was working with the Qatar Falcons and NMP PCH HayaBusa both. He won 4-way gold with the Belgians in 2016 and 2018 and added the 8-way bronze medals with the Qatar team in Australia.

Both coaches have challenging tasks ahead of them after switching internally. Jérémie Rollett has to try turning the bronze medals into something even better. However, he has the 8-way gold medal experience to make it happen. Gary Smith has to make the next step with the Qatar Tigers, which would have to be a 4-way medal position in Tanay 2020.

Gary Smith could eventually run into a situation with a serious conflict of interest. The Belgian 4-way world champions would probably not be too happy if their coach was working with one of the toughest opponents. The Qatar Tigers are not seriously threatening NMP PCH HayaBusa yet. However, it will be Gary Smith's goal to bring them exactly to that point. No matter what - tighter competition will be even more exciting for the teams and for the audience...