posted Oct 15th, 2002 - Interviews with three former DeLand Majik members (Gary Smith, Joey Jones, Solly Williams), 4-way world champions of 2004, have recently been published with information from the archives. Only inside center Doug Park did not have his turn so far. However, he and Gary Smith eventually visited the NSL office together for an interview on the morning of 15 October 2002.

Gary Smith and Joey Jones are still very active in the sport and contribute regularly with their feedback in the NSL News Coaches Corner. Doug Park is still following 4-way competition with great interest and randomly shares a few remarks after related NSL News updates.

Gary Smith, Joey Jones and Doug Park also have NMP PCH HayaBusa in common. Doug Park was the team's first coach, and Joey Jones continued the work with the Belgians. Gary Smith eventually completed the Majik job successfully and guided HayaBusa to their first world championship outdoor title in 2014, followed by two more in 2016 and 2018.

The NSL News introduced Doug Park as the "inside wing-man" of DeLand Majik in 2002: "Gary Smith is Majik's point. They just returned to DeLand after winning the 4-way gold medal at the FAI World Cup 2002 in Spain last week. The NSL News invited Doug Park and Gary Smith for an interview in the NSL office on Tuesday morning."

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NSL News interview with Gary Smith and Doug Park on 15 October 2002

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NSL News: Doug, Gary, thanks for visiting this morning and congratulations for the gold medal in Spain last week. Saudi-Arabia, Sweden, Russia, Spain so far this year, what's next on Doug's travel agenda? DOUG PARK: Malaysia, Thursday morning.

NSL News: Is there a competition in Malaysia? DOUG PARK: No, it is coaching in the new SkyVenture windtunnel. NSL News: Gary, what about your travel schedule. GARY SMITH: As little as possible. I am happy to be back for a while. I hope to do a trip to South Africa within the next six months.

NSL News: Let's begin seriously with the world cup. What was your most memorable experience besides winning? DOUG PARK: Doing 8-way with Airspeed and seeing Airspeed winning the second place in the last round. Our team was just as excited as they were themselves. GARY SMITH: The camaraderie between the whole U.S. delegation was amazing. In fact, there was good sportsmanship shown by all competitors.

NSL News: Doug, this is not your first gold medal at a world cup. FX took the first place already in 1998. How does it feel to have won two gold medals at world cups and still not even compete at the world championship next year? DOUG PARK: The first one really was like: "Wow, we won the world cup". I had never competed at any big competitions by then. This victory now feels the best knowing that all the top teams in the world were there. Even though we lost at the U.S. Nationals, it still felt wonderful to win in Spain.

NSL News: Gary, you have been at four World Championships already. How was it for you in Spain? GARY SMITH: It surely felt like a world championship knowing that all the best team in the world were there.

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FAI World Cup 2002			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open		6,13,14	G,C,7,5	21,P,20	D,3,4	K,A,E,H,8	11,9,12	19,O,1	22,L,B,18	16,Q,2	N,J,10,F	Total	Avg
1	DeLand Majik	US	19	24	21	23	29	19	21	21	22	25	224	22.4
2	Airspeed Vertical	US	19	27	19	21	28	17	21	20	22	28	222	22.2
3	Perris Maubeuge	FR	17	26	23	20	26	19	21	21	23	25	221	22.1
4	DeLand Norgies	NO	19	26	20	19	29	19	19	20	20	25	216	21.6
5	Golden Knights Gold	US	18	26	20	20	27	17	19	19	21	-	187	20.8

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NSL News: How important is it for you and Majik to compete at the world championship, and how will Majik get there? DOUG PARK: For me personally, winning a world championship would be great. But pushing myself to the limit is the most important thing. GARY SMITH: It was a dream goal to go with Majik to the world championship. But we had a fantastic year anyway, we will see what will happen in the future.

NSL News: How much does it matter for you to show your best at the right time? Is this also a part of the athletic challenge? DOUG PARK: Yes. We all felt at the nationals that it was hard to push ourselves. We felt like we were stuck in the mud. GARY SMITH: You train for peaking at the right time. And it was difficult for us to know how to get to the peak with our given time frame.

NSL News: Doug, why did it feel like being stuck in the mud? DOUG PARK: Our training jumps in Ottawa were not as good as we wanted them to be. And we had a hard time to get the momentum going. There was no training jump that had Majik in it.

NSL News: Why was that? DOUG PARK: I am beating around the bush, alright. We had very high expectations for the nationals. When you set high goals and you stay only a little bit short, then it feels like you are even very far behind. With skydiving as such a mental sport, it has a significant psychological impact.

NSL News: Did you feel this way already before the meet had started, or did it happen during the first competition jumps in Ottawa? DOUG PARK: It already felt like this at the first jump in Ottawa. GARY SMITH: Even the training jumps leading up to Ottawa were not as sparky.

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USPA Nationals 2002		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open	B,12,2	K,6,4	20,5,13	D,Q,11,18	N,3,9	A,21,16	22,H,L,J	G,C,7,15	E,19,17	10,P,M,8	Total	Avg
1	Golden Knights	19	21	19	21	29	22	23	23	22	19	218	21.8
2	Arizona Airspeed	19	22	18	21	26	22	22	21	23	21	215	21.5
3	DeLand Majik	19	19	20	20	24	22	23	24	22	19	212	21.2
4	Golden Knights Black	15	17	16	17	20	17	20	20	19	16	177	17.7
5	Airspeed Zulu	17	18	14	17	22	15	18	17	17	16	171	17.1
6	Cross Keys Fluid	16	16	13	15	18	16	15	13	15	15	152	15.2
7	DeLand Frost	15	16	12	13	17	15	17	17	14	13	149	14.9
8	Ranch Tribe	14	14	13	13	17	11	16	10	15	13	136	13.6
9	Elsinore Adrenaline	13	13	12	13	16	11	15	13	15	13	134	13.4
10	Synchronicity	12	12	10	12	17	13	13	15	12	12	128	12.8
11	Untrained Eye	12	12	11	13	14	10	11	9	12	11	115	11.5
12	Team Kruegeraand	8	8	6	5	6	7	6	7	8	5	66	6.6

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NSL News: So it got worse when the first jumps where not as good as you expected. What happened in Round 5? DOUG PARK: The first jump was okay. Round 2 had an out-of-synch key. Round 3 was great. Round 4 was okay. Round 5 went to sh... A key was again out of synch, and it was followed by a long pause. In addition, we caused a penalty.

NSL News: What happened to the Majik spirit after Round 5? Did you still see a chance to pull it out? DOUG PARK: The spirit was a little bit shattered. We have never been that far behind in a meet before.

NSL News: You did not know the scores by then. Did you already feel that Round 5 broke your neck without knowing the scores? DOUG PARK: Yeah. We knew that it was a destructive round. GARY SMITH: At this point, we were not aware how far we were behind. We took it for granted that we would be behind. For the rest of the meet, we performed pretty good. But the jumps still did not feel majikal.

NSL News: So let's forget about it. Would you do anything differently looking back at the 2002 season? DOUG PARK: I think Majik had an incredible, amazing year. It is a part of athletic and competitive sports that you may have a bad meet some day. It is hard to be on top of your game all the time. As a young team, we still have to learn from our experiences. GARY SMITH: Unfortunately, we were in the situation where we fell behind our targeted training jumps. And as it got closer to the U.S. Nationals our training volume increased where in hindsight I think it would have been better to do less jumps and give it 100% energy on each jump.

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NSL News: Let's look into the future now. Will this Majik team win the world championship some day? DOUG PARK: Majik has a planning meeting on the agenda for next week. Then we will know more about the Majik future. GARY SMITH: Hopefully, we will win a world meet. But I am not sure what the makeup of the team will be.

NSL News: You saw France, Norway and the Golden Knights in Spain. What do you expect for the 2003 season and at the world meet? DOUG PARK: France is an incredibly strong team. But the Knights and the Norgies will be training hard. And the meet will be from a Pilatus Porter. So it will be an interesting situation.

NSL News: France already won the 8-way this year in Spain. Can they do the double for the first time? DOUG PARK: Both Airspeed 8 and the Golden Knights will be very hard to beat. Airspeed has the experience in 8-way. And the Knights have the drive. GARY SMITH: It will be very tough for France to win both.

NSL News: The Golden Knights did not even make the final round in Spain. Will they be able to defend Excalibur for the U.S.A. successfully? GARY SMITH: We have to remember the fact that the Golden Knights peaked at the right time this year. They did not focus at all on winning the world cup. And we know that they will go into a very hard training year in 2003. If they can repeat the peak next year they will be a very hard team to beat.

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FAI World Cup 2002			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open		6,13,14	G,C,7,5	21,P,20	D,3,4	K,A,E,H,8	11,9,12	19,O,1	22,L,B,18	16,Q,2	N,J,10,F	Total	Avg
1	France	FR	17	15	17	26	17	18	18	20	19	19	186	18.6
2	Golden Knights	US	15	15	17	26	16	18	16	21	19	19	182	18.2
3	Majik Airspeed	US	16	14	17	21	17	17	18	19	19	18	176	17.6
4	Russia	RU	17	11	16	17	15	16	14	12	16	18	152	15.2
5	Norway	NO	13	11	13	20	12	14	14	15	14	16	142	14.2

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NSL News: Majik did the 8-way together with Airspeed in Spain and finished in third place without any training. Does the Majik meeting next week include 8-way plans with Airspeed for 2003? DOUG PARK: No. It seems as if they have only one slot left to fill. The Airspeed 8-way team will probably be the Vertical members plus Eliana, Kirk and Gary of Airspeed Zulu and somebody else.

NSL News: I am sure that you know that next year will be a qualification year for the next world championship in 2004 again. Does this increase the chances for Majik to continue? DOUG PARK: Yes. GARY SMITH: Not sure.

NSL News: Airspeed will train 8-way. And the Golden Knights will have to train from the right-hand door of the Porter, while the U.S. Nationals in Lake Wales will use the Twin Otter again. Do you see any serious competition for Majik at the nationals next year? DOUG PARK: Yes. Both Airspeed and the Knights will still be very strong next year. GARY SMITH: This year has proved that on any given day any team can win.

NSL News: The NSL Championship is coming up as the last major event his year. Is Majik planning to set another world record performance at Fantasy of Flight in November? DOUG PARK: We look forward to putting our best foot forward and steal the NSL Shugar Cup from the Golden Knights. NSL News: Thank you, Doug, Gary.