posted Apr 24th, 2020 - The looming jeopardy of this year's FAI World Championship of Formation Skydiving in Tanay, Russia, has finally become reality with the cancellation of the event.

Today, on April 24th, the International Skydiving Commission (ISC) of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) announced officially that the event was rescheduled. The new date is almost exactly a year later, on 7 - 21 August 2021, and it will still be hosted by Russia in Tanay.

ISC delegates had informed the NSL News earlier that the decision would be made at the end of next month. The significantly earlier announcement allows federations and teams to begin with new planning even before the 2020 outdoor season gets a potential restart.

There are a lot of implications that the canceled event is bringing to the Formation Skydiving competition world. The ISC announcement includes one of the many considerations of how to deal with the new situation: "Events previously scheduled for 2021 and 2022 are now under review and decisions will be communicated at a later date."

This year's FAI Indoor World Cup might not be affected, as the event was just rescheduled from April to a later date (October 21 - 24) at the same place.

---

Official announcement by the International Skydiving Commission (ISC) of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) on 24 April 2020

---

One of the questions that the ISC will "communicate at a later date" is the timing of the major FAI events in the future. World championships and world cups with their 2-year cycles have been taking annual turns so far. However, the FAI calendar of 2021 events is not showing a world cup, while the new date of the world championship in Tanay is already posted.

It happened once in 2012 that world cup (Prostejov) and world championship (Dubai) were scheduled in the same year. It seems like the world cup might be skipped in 2021.

The implications of the cancellation reach even further with the question of the date for the next world championship after the Tanay event. Since 2004, the world championships have been held in the years with even numbers, and the world cups in the odd years. The NSL News has no recollection of the reasons for the three consecutive world cups (2011 - 2012 - 2013).

However, the rotation between world championships and world cups was changed once since 1985. FAI/IPC decided after the world meet in 2001 (Spain) and 2003 (France) to schedule the next event for 2004 (Croatia). The rotation between the two major FAI events has been the same ever since.

---

Rotation of FAI indoor and outdoor world championships and world cups since 1985

---

The timing of the FAI/ISC events is a crucial part of the planning for any teams who stay together for a longer time period, and who are aiming at participating at the major international events. Communicating the dates of the next world meets and world cups after Tanay 2021 will be one of the challenging tasks for the FAI/ISC delegates.

There is already a new situation that the teams will have to deal with. It has not happened yet that indoor and outdoor world meets take place in the same year. The FAI/ISC indoor events followed the same rotation pattern as the outdoor events since the organization decided to sanction indoor competition, as well.

The first indoor world cup (Austin, United States) was held in 2014, the year of the outdoor world championship (Prostejov, Czech Republic). The first indoor world championship followed in 2015 (Prague, Czech Republic), while the teams competed also at the outdoor world cup the same year (Teuge, Netherlands).

2021 will become the first year when only the national teams compete at world championships, indoors or/and outdoors. Both events are separated by four months (April - August), and it will be very challenging for teams competing in both environments to be well prepared for their top performances...