posted Aug 16th, 2021 - The recent NSL News coverage of the FAI Tanay Mondial 2020 and the previews of the upcoming UK Nationals 2021 are not complete yet.

Not only the British 4-way teams, Chimera (4-way Open) and NFTO (4-way Women), missed the world meet. The participation record of British 8-way teams at FAI World Championships of Formation Skydiving is almost as flawless at the ones of the British 4-way teams, who had never missed an event until this year. British 8-way teams have attended all world meets since 1985 except for the one in Menzelinsk 2010.

Microclim8 finished 4th in Australia 2018 with a 15.2 team record average, after a 2-point battle with Australia (JYR8). Most likely, both teams would have finished one position lower this year, as the currently four best 8-way teams in the world were all present in Tanay.

A very different Microclim8 lineup won the British 8-way title at the 2019 championships with a 10.2 average, and Eros member Travis Wood might be the only 8-way champion trying to defend the UK gold medals this year, even though he is probably coming back with his Eros team mates' previous 8-way team, Project Ride the Dragon. He provided more information of the expected 4-way battle from the Eros perspective.

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FAI World Meet 2018			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open		21,L,B,G	22,18,17	19,7,O	J,16,12	10,A,D,15	Q,M,F,C,N	H,20,P,13	6,14,11	E,2,5	4,1,3	Total	Avg
1	Golden Knights	US	24	21	18	24	19	29	21	18	17	33	224	22.4
2	Tanay	RU	21	21	17	22	20	28	16	18	18	28	209	20.9
3	Qatar Falcons	QA	19	16	15	18	14	21	16	14	14	23	170	17.0
4	MicroClim8	UK	17	15	12	14	15	21	15	12	13	18	152	15.2
5	JYR8	AU	14	14	13	17	11	20	14	14	12	21	150	15.0
6	Airbus	DE	13	15	9	15	11	16	12	12	10	16	129	12.9
7	Brazil	BR	11	10	9	12	9	12	9	10	9	16	107	10.7

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Microclim8 at the FAI Outdoor World Meet 2018

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This year's British Skydiving Championships are shaping up to be a rematch of the thrillingly close competition in 2019, when the defending champions NFTO had to defend the AAA Class title against Chimera and Eros. Both challengers had put in large amounts of training since the previous national championships in 2018.

The competition ended up being much closer than any had anticipated. NFTO eventually pulled away to sit comfortably in 1st place, the competition between Chimera and Eros came down to Round 10. The teams were tied at Round 9, and Chimera were able to squeeze an extra two points out of Round 10 to finish with a total of 187 points, just six points behind NFTO with 193 and two points ahead of Eros (185).

Last year's UK Nationals were canceled due to the pandemic, so the upcoming competition will be the first rematch, and all three teams are back and hoping to improve on their 2019 performance. This year has been a difficult time for all the teams, with different and specific advantages and disadvantages going into the competition.

Only Eros is actually returning with an unchanged lineup. Eros had swapped their center positions for the 2019 season to have player-coach Joey Jones in his outside center slot and Travis Wood as inside center. Lineup and slots are the same this year, which gives Eros the benefit of continuity.

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UK Nationals 2019		1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class	2,H,7		17,M,J,4		F,13,A,P		20,15,Q		10,21,1		12,22,C		9,E,11		D,K,L,8		O,18,B,16		6,5,19		Total	Avg
1	NFTO	21		22	-1	28		17		15	-1	15		18	-1	18	-1	20		19		193	19.3
2	Chimera	20	-2	20	-1	26	-2	15	-1	15		13	-1	22		20		17	-1	19		187	18.7
3	Eros	21		20		25		17		15		14		19		19		18		17		185	18.5

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NFTO - Chimera - Eros at the UK Nationals 2019

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Chimera replaced Chris Judd in the tail slot with Will Cooke in 2020, and Pete Harries has been on camera. Will Cooke competed with 4mula in the same slot at previous UK Nationals, while it will be his first competition for the top spot with Chimera.

Last and not least, NFTO brought in seasoned veteran Julia Swallow in her outside center slot that she had with Satori, and Anna Hicks moved from outside center to Point, as the NSL News reported earlier. Travis Wood said that all NFTO members are familiar with their slots, while the team's experiences are limited to whatever training the difficult two years (2020 - 2021) have allowed to provide.

Travis Wood thinks that Chimera seems to have a significant advantage with training in this time period. All team members live close to each other, and they have been able to add team jumps mid-week to keep in shape, and they could easily train on weekends, when they were not organizing larger training camps within the United Kingdom.

None of the British teams have been able to travel to the United States and train as they have done in previous years. NFTO had to work around the UK travel restrictions, as Julia Swallow is based in Portugal, which has been on and off the British red list throughout the pandemic. This surely made travel arrangements more difficult than usual.

Eros had to wait for their player-coach Joey Jones to return from the United States before they were able to start their 2021 season. This gave them a much later start compared to the other two top contenders. Eros have the benefit of their 4-way world champion coach training and competing in the active lineup.

Due to the travel restrictions, Chimera and NFTO both had to rely on video coaching. Arizona Airspeed member and new Airspeed XP8 world champion Niklas Hemlin is coaching Chimera, and the team's longer training camps took place in Arizona in the past. The trips to Eloy have been replaced by Zoom coaching. NFTO have been in the same situation with coach Roy Jenssen. Eros did not replace Joey Jones at any time, which has provided in-person coaching during all of the team's training.

The 2021 season has provided each team with their own ups and downs going into the competition, and the outcome seems to be unpredictable. NFTO is the most experienced team with the highest previous scores, while Chimera probably have the most training jumps this year. Eros have managed to keep their lineup completely unchanged from the 2019 season. It will be interesting to see how the different approaches impact the scores of each of the teams, and whether or not the competition will be as close as in 2019.