posted Oct 7th, 2019 - The focus of the NSL News coverage is now shifting from any other events to the FAI Outdoor World Cup, which begins with Round 1 on Tuesday morning at Skydive Arizona.

The live coverage from the event site begins with a video clip that features training activities on Friday in Eloy, which was also arrival day for the NSL News. Several 4-way and 8-way teams came to Arizona early enough to get familiar with the event site and add more training jumps to the event preparations.

It's a relatively small field compared to previous world cups, and some of the best 4-way teams in the world will not post any scores. The NSL News mentioned earlier that NMP PCH HayaBusa attended the USPA Nationals knowing that they would not be able to travel to Eloy because of the commitment to the military CISM world championship in China that takes place almost at exactly the same time.

The Qatar Tigers are in the same situation as HayaBusa, together with Airheads from Switzerland. This means that SDC Rhythm XP and Arizona Airspeed will probably be once again in a duel, this time for the 1st place and the FAI gold medals.

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Training activities at Skydive Arizona on Friday

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With the sets of gold and silver medals most likely in U.S. possession, the battle for the 3rd place is probably the most interesting part of the 4-way competition. Two more U.S. teams, Airspeed Odyssey and Defiance, will be facing the French national 4-way Open Class team and Echochamber from Sweden.

Both have the challenging task to keep the U.S. delegation from sweeping all medal slots in the 4-way Open Class event. It is possible that all four U.S. teams will be in the Top 4 slots on the leaderboard. However, Echochamber is probably the top contender for bronze medals, and the French 4-way Open Class team might have benefited from the intensive 8-way training, as Craig Girard explained with his own experiences.

Both French 4-way teams have little training in 4-way, and national coach Mathieu Bernier does not have any higher expectations than hoping for a chance to be in the race for bronze medals.

The French delegation was in training on Friday, as well, and the teams switched back and forth between 4-way and 8-way for a realistic simulation of the situation beginning on Tuesday. Monday is the official training day for teams and judges, and the competition draw will be posted after the opening ceremony in the afternoon.