posted Sep 22nd, 2020 - The most recent NSL News visit at Paraclete XP turned out to be very different than planned. Main goal was to meet Airspeed XP8's substitute Craig Girard and watch him live in 8-way action.

The U.S. national 8-way team had scheduled a new training camp last week, and Craig Girard was back to fill the same slot for Matt Davidson. Official XP8 alternate Andrew Happick was not available, and Craig Girard had been helping out earlier this year, as well.

Craig Girard arrived at Skydive Paraclete XP for the 1-week camp and left without jumping from a plane once. The very rainy remnants of Hurricane Laura had made it to North Carolina, and the circumstances did not allow much of 8-way training at all. Fortunately, Paraclete XP's 16-foot flying chamber a few miles away was available at times, even though the indoor training is not what the 8-way team is currently looking for.

However, Airspeed XP8 used the week as productively as possible, and the training camp generated some positive surprises despite the circumstances. The first surprise happened when the Airspeed XP8 members were on stand-by, and the NSL News happened to be in the team room together when Jeana Billings, Craig Girard, Brian Krause and Matt Davidson.

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Storytelling - NSL Live Talk at Skydive Paraclete XP on 16 September 2020

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The three former Golden Knights 8-way world champions (Matt Davidson, Craig Girard, Brian Krause) were using the time on the ground for storytelling in the team room, and their current team mate Jeana Billings was listening to the fascinating 8-way history as much as the NSL News was naturally interested in new information.

The NSL-TV camera was not recording the first few hours of storytelling, until the three former Golden Knights team mates agreed to continue on camera. It was not much later when Kirk Verner walked into the room and joined the new part of the recorded conversation.

Kirk Verner was not a Golden Knights team mate with Matt Davidson, Craig Girard and Brian Krause. However, he was another Formation Skydiving legend sharing his experiences and stories with his long-time friends, opponents and now team mates.

It became even more exciting when another Golden Knights 8-way world champion unexpectedly entered the room and happily joined the storytelling conversation with his alumni. In fact, Scott Rhodes is the most successful 8-way competitor in the history of Formation Skydiving competition with his six FAI 8-way gold medals. The recorded part of the XP8 storytelling session continued until the NSL-TV camera ran out of battery unnoticed. The storytelling continued, and some of the best stories could be missing...

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Airspeed XP8 indoor training last week - Training sessions with Craig Girard and Matt Davidson

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The next unexpected surprise happened after Airspeed XP8 had switched to indoor training on the following days. Craig Girard was still filling on for Andrew Happick, who has been filling in for Matt Davidson during the earlier training camps this year, and who is the official alternate for the FAI Mondial 2020 next year.

Matt Davidson has been attending the XP8 training regularly before and after his hip replacement surgery. The NSL News story on August 27th had provided the latest update on his recovery process, including NSL Live Talk with him.

Last week, Matt Davidson also brought his jumpsuit and helmet to Paraclete XP when Airspeed XP8 was training indoors. He entered the antechamber fully equipped together with the team, but he did not go any further at this point in time. However, this changed after a few flying sessions of the team, and the NSL-TV camera unexpectedly recorded his first indoor training flights with Airspeed XP8.

He took his slot that Craig Girard has been filling last week. It was easy to identify Craig Girard with his blue helmet, and it became much more challenging to find Matt Davidson in his XP8 outfit, either on the NSL-TV video clip or on the footage of the top camera. Matt Davidson entered the flying chamber with the team only a few times, and it still looked like he had trained with Airspeed XP8 all the time...