posted Dec 21st, 2000 - The NSL News continues with interviews that have not been published yet at SKYLEAGUE.COM. The series began with thoughts of DeLand Norgies member Carl-Erik Tuv, which were documented in September 2000. Golden Knights member Chris Talbert then explained in November 2000 how and why the U.S. Army team was switching the focus from 8-way to 4-way competition.

A month later, the NSL News met with Craig Girard at SkyVenture Orlando. He was in Florida for an indoor training camp with his 4-way team Airspeed Vertical. This new Arizona Airspeed lineup (Craig Girard, John Eagle, Neal Houston, Mark Kirkby, with Mark Steinbaugh on camera) succeeded the legendary team and original Airspeed lineup (Jack Jefferies, Dan BC, Kirk Verner, Mark Kirkby) who won the 4-way gold medals in 1995 and 1997, silver in 1999.

The Airspeed Vertical members were also in Airspeed's 8-way lineup, together with the original 4-way members, and they had already won 8-way gold in 1999. Airspeed Vertical then won the USPA Nationals in 2000 and followed up with gold medals at the FAI World Cup 2000 in November. A month later, Airspeed was back in training at SkyVenture Orlando:

"The NSL News met one of the most successful competitors in the history of 8-way Formation Skydiving at the SkyVenture wind tunnel in Orlando last week. Craig Girard, former Golden Knights world champion and current Airspeed world champion in 8-way, is sharing his thoughts with the skydiving world."

---

NSL News Interview with Craig Girard on 21 December 2000

NSL News: Craig, you made the long trip from the West coast to the East coast just to come to the SkyVenture wind tunnel, you haven't even set foot on the drop zone while you're here, have you?

Craig Girard: Not one foot, not yet.

NSL News: So is it worth it?

Craig Girard: Is it worth it to get better? Definitely.

NSL News: What's the purpose of the training only in the wind tunnel while you're here?

Craig Girard: Individual flying and turns and communication together. We've been looking at all of our last year's jumps and performances in the meets, and we really feel our communication together is where we will make the most gains and biggest improvements. It's not like we have to physically go faster, but we have to be even more consistent than we are now and have better communication.

NSL News: Is this the first official Airspeed Vertical tunnel camp here?

Craig Girard: It is, we've mixed and matched last year after the Sebastian Nationals, we were in here with the entire 8-way team, but this is the very first Airspeed Vertical tunnel training camp together.

---

USPA Nationals 2000			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open		E,5,19	P,21,15	7,24,13	F,23,J,17	1,22,12	D,G,M,11	20,B,4	8,H,18	16,14,A	K,L,C,Q,O	Total	Avg
1	Airspeed Vertical	US	19	20	21	24	17	23	21	18	18	32	213	21.3
2	Perris FR Maubeuge	FR	21	22	21	22	17	24	17	17	18	29	208	20.8
3	FX	US	20	20	20	23	16	24	19	19	13	33	207	20.7
3	DeLand Norgies	NO	19	19	19	24	17	23	19	17	17	33	207	20.7
3	DeLand PD Blue	US	19	19	19	22	16	24	19	19	19	31	207	20.7
6	Airspeed Zulu	US	19	18	19	23	16	24	17	16	16	31	199	19.9
7	Golden Knights Gold	US	19	19	20	20	13	24	18	16	18	31	198	19.8
8	Elsinore Matrix	US	15	14	15	19	14	19	15	14	15	27	167	16.7
9	Skydive Udine Sinapsi	IT	17	17	17	14	15	15	12	14	14	21	156	15.6
10	Perris Energy	US	14	14	15	16	13	17	13	12	13	22	149	14.9
11	GKRC	US	10	12	9	9	10	13	11	9	10	13	106	10.6

---

NSL News: Last year at the Nationals the organizers did not allow the teams to go to the tunnel to train during the meet. Do you think this made sense?

Craig Girard: Maybe being in there could mean something for people mentally or even personally, yeah. For us, we did not feel it would be a big advantage. We felt we had done most our training and we were in meet mode then, in meet preparation and all of the gains that were going to be made had been established already. Mostly we wanted to be fresh, to be physically ready for the meet.

NSL News: The world meet is six months away from here on now. How many actual freefall jumps are you going to do from here until the world meet?

Craig Girard: 1,000 we're going to try.

NSL News: How many tunnel camps?

Craig Girard: Several, there will be several tunnel camps. This is the first one that Vertical has time to do and set aside, and we look at it as a reward for a lot of the hard work that we have done. There are some very specific things that we want to work on, most of them are not the most complicated things. Mostly the turns. A lot of the things that we end up messing up are in Block 9, Block 7, Block 15, Block 14, things like that. More importantly, doing the tunnel allows us to do 4-way random work. There is almost nothing we can't do random wise in this tunnel. When you're not so much focused on the speed, but developing the communication, then you can always add speed later, and we're really finding that very critical where we're at right now that we don't need to add a whole lot more speed. If you establish really good communication and a high degree of trust, then the key speed will naturally pick up from there. And if there is something that goes wrong, you can isolate the problem and get it back on track and then pick up right away.

NSL News: I saw you flying a lot on your back before the training started, how was that?

Craig Girard: That was the first time I was in there on my back actually. We did almost three hours yesterday in the wind tunnel. And I was in there for about 30 minutes just lying on my back. Challenging, very challenging, and fun.

NSL News: Are you planning to make one skydive here while you are in Florida?

Craig Girard: No.

NSL News: Vertical seems to be very ambitious. You already won the World Cup, you seem to be a little bit ahead of France anyway, but there seems to be a lot of drive. Where does Vertical plan to go point-wise next year at the World Meet?

Craig Girard: Oh, I would hate to put a limit on there and then surpass that. I don't want to put a number on it.

NSL News: The schedule from here on until the World Meet has a couple of meets on the list, which one is going to be the next competition coming up?

Craig Girard: I think we have the SSL meet in January, then we have the Valentine's Meet in February.

---

FAI World Meet 2001			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open		8,19,24	A,L,22,H	E,10,D,11	21,6,4	B,18,C,14	G,5,20	2,1,16	M,K,12,9	15,23,P	O,17,Q,N	Total	Avg
1	Arizona Airspeed	US	19	25	21	19	20	20	20	23	17	30	214	21.4
2	Maubeuge	FR	19	20	20	18	21	21	19	23	20	31	212	21.2
3	DeLand Norgies	NO	19	22	20	18	19	19	19	21	18	31	206	20.6
4	Sebastian XL	UK	17	22	20	17	18	19	19	21	18	28	199	19.9
5	Endeavour	CH	14	17	15	14	14	16	15	17	13	26	161	16.1
6	Sinapsi PD	IT	12	13	17	15	15	15	14	19	15	24	159	15.9
7	Germany	DE	13	13	15	15	16	15	14	18	13	-	132	14.7
8	Russia	RU	13	17	14	13	14	14	16	15	13	-	129	14.3
8	Belgium	BE	14	14	14	13	14	14	15	17	14	-	129	14.3
10	Japan	JP	14	14	15	14	16	13	11	17	12	-	126	14.0
11	Spain	ES	14	11	14	14	15	12	15	18	-	-	113	14.1
12	Netherlands	NL	13	16	14	13	14	12	13	14	-	-	109	13.6
13	Australia	AU	13	11	15	14	10	14	15	11	-	-	103	12.9
14	Voodoo	ZA	11	14	13	12	13	13	11	15	-	-	102	12.8
15	Canada	CA	10	11	11	12	11	12	13	13	-	-	93	11.6
16	Croatia	HR	9	11	11	11	12	10	9	13	-	-	86	10.8
17	Brazil	BR	10	11	9	9	10	10	11	12	-	-	82	10.3
18	Ireland	IE	10	11	10	9	8	9	11	10	-	-	78	9.8
19	Denmark	DK	8	10	11	8	9	9	10	11	-	-	76	9.5
20	Austria	AT	5	9	7	10	11	10	8	12	-	-	72	9.0
21	Portugal	PT	7	3	8	10	9	9	9	11	-	-	66	8.3
22	Czech Republic	CZ	7	9	4	8	11	5	10	11	-	-	65	8.1
23	Lithuania	LT	8	7	6	8	8	9	7	8	-	-	61	7.6
24	Argentina	AR	5	8	6	9	7	7	5	8	-	-	55	6.9
25	Israel	IL	6	8	4	9	5	5	8	9	-	-	54	6.8
26	Slovakia	SK	5	8	7	8	7	7	5	0	-	-	47	5.9
26	Finland	FI	4	8	7	9	5	7	5	2	-	-	47	5.9
28	Indonesia	ID	6	6	6	5	5	6	5	6	-	-	45	5.6
29	Turkey	TR	5	5	4	7	7	5	5	6	-	-	44	5.5
30	Slovenia	SI	8	10	9	9	3	0	0	4	-	-	43	5.4
31	Poland	PL	5	6	5	3	2	7	1	9	-	-	38	4.8
32	Colombia	CO	3	3	5	1	3	4	6	5	-	-	30	3.8
33	Korea	KR	2	4	2	6	3	0	0	6	-	-	23	2.9
34	Zimbabwe	ZW	2	3	1	4	1	3	3	4	-	-	21	2.6

---

NSL News: So the start at the Southwest Skydiving League and then the Valentine's Meet, and I'm sure that there are a couple more before the World Meet.

Craig Girard: There's an Elsinore meet, a Perris meet, so we scheduled all the SSL meets, to do all of them.

NSL News: Wonderful. Craig, you have an 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. How do you manage your whole skydiving life with your family?

Craig Girard: I get a lot of support. My wife is an ex-competitor, she got 3,000 jumps, she was on the Swiss national team, and both my kids come to the drop zone every single day. The school bus drops them off at the drop zone and they live in skydiving.

NSL News: Thank you, Craig.

---

The interview was followed by breaking news that were posted at the same time:

"Breaking news: Airspeed made the final decision regarding the 8-way competition at next year's World Championship in Spain. The original team squad that won last year's World Championship, this year's World Cup and this year's USPA Nationals will represent the United States in Spain. This team squad is including Jack Jefferies, Dan BC and Gary Beyer. The NSL News will follow up on this topic."

---

The new Airspeed Vertical lineup won the FAI 4-way gold medals in 2001, while the 8-way lineup finished in 2nd place this time. Three Airspeed Vertical members (Craig Girard, Mark Kirkby, John Eagle) competed in both events, while Neal Houston trained and competed only in 4-way.

Craig Girard continued in 8-way with Arizona Airspeed and won FAI silver in 2003, followed by gold in 2004 and silver again in 2006. Then he switched to only 4-way with Airspeed Odyssey (Eliana Rodriguez, Andy Delk, Mark Kirkby) and won the next 4-way gold medal in Maubeuge 2008, followed by silver in Menzelinsk 2010.

Then he moved to Dubai together with Eliana Rodriguez to help launching the Formation Skydiving competition project there. Now he is coaching the Russian 8-way team from Tanay and has guided them to the world's 8-way top spot.