posted Jul 20th, 2025 - The recent NSL News excursions into the history of formation skydiving competition eventually ended up at the very beginning of the FAI/ISC events, which may be defined with the introduction of the current format at the world championship in 1985. The review of the history was caused by the car crash death of Skydive DeLand's founder and owner Bob Hallet in May, whose original partner Tom Piras was a 4-way world champion with DeLand Air Bears in 1985 and died in 1992.

The most recent NSL News update included parts of a historic video production by freefall filming legend Norman Kent who featured the DeLand Air Bears at the world championship in Mali Losinj. A closer look at the actual scores in 1985 made the same event historically relevant, as well, not only due to the introduction of the current competition format and the first participation of a delegation from Russia.

It has been unusual that meet averages in horizontal formation skydiving competition are higher in 8-way than in 4-way. In fact the 4-way teams always scored higher in the last 25 years at world championships and any other major outdoor events. The 4-way world champions took control of the meet averages beginning in Spain 2001 and never allowed an 8-way team to finish with a higher meet average ever since. Both events had to go through their own specific dive pool changes in the last 40 years, while the working times never changed, 35 seconds in 4-way and 50 seconds in 8-way. Arizona Airspeed's Vertical lineup of 2001 (John Eagle, Craig Girard, Neal Houston, Mark Kirkby, Mark Steinbaugh on camera) launched the 4-way dominance with a 22-point difference (21.4 - 19.2) over their own 8-way team mates in 2001, and the gap began to widen year by year.

Average scoring progression at outdoor world championships between 1985 and 2024

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The higher meet averages between 4-way and 8-way switched back and forth between 1985 and 1999, and the differences were not as large as the gap has been in the last 25 years. Arizona Airspeed's 8-way team was the last one who won the internal and unofficial competition between the two events in 1999. Opponents were also their own team mates of the original Airspeed lineup (Dan BC, Jack Jefferies, Mark Kirkby, Kirk Verner, Steve Nowak on camera) who ended up in 2nd place behind France.

8-way teams had the higher averages at three world championships before 1999, and the U.S. team Coors from California won at the first event with the new format in 1985. They outscored the DeLand Air Bears by two points (12.0 - 11.8) in their 50 seconds of working time with the first official dive pool mix of blocks and random formations as it is still know by now.

The French 4-way team of 1987 reversed the order in Brazil 1987 by the same 2-point margin on a higher level (13.4 - 13.2), and the NSL News recently documented the event with the update on July 8th, including a video of the event near the Iguazu waterfalls, produced by Hans-Joachim Gally. The French 4-way team outscored the Golden Knights 8-way team once again in Spain 1989 (15.2 - 13.8) before the U.S. Army won in 1991, in the middle of their Golden Knights decade of six consecutive 8-way gold medals between 1987 and 1997.

FAI Outdoor World Championship 1999			1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open Top 7		9,24,A		O,M,2,Q		14,P,11		19,3,15		N,8,12		C,1,E,20		K,23,17		B,16,21		L,22,J,7		G,5,6		Total	Avg
1	Maubeuge	FR	23		23		18		19		18		24		21		21		21		20		208	20.8
2	Arizona Airspeed	US	23		24		19		16	-2	17		26		19		19		20		19		202	20.2
3	DeLand Norgies	NO	21		23		16		17		16		23		20		19		20		16		191	19.1
4	Sebastian XL	UK	21		23		16		17		17		23		18		17		20		18		190	19.0
5	Russia	RU	22		20		13		16		16		17	-4	18		17		18		15		172	17.2
6	Australia	AU	20		21		15		15		14		19		17	-2	17		15	-2	16		169	16.9
7	Daedalus	DE	18		18		13		13		14		18		15		14		16		16		155	15.5

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Arizona Airspeed at the FAI World Championship 1999

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Golden Knights and Arizona Airspeed won the FAI gold medals for the U.S. delegation in 1997, both teams with new historic record averages. The 22.4 average of the Golden Knights in 8-way was standing unchallenged for 15 years until a new U.S. Army lineup posted the 22.9 average in Dubai 2012. The 14-point difference to the advantage of 8-way over 4-way in 1997 is still the highest margin in history.

However, the gap between the two events widened when 4-way took over in 2001. The 22-point difference (21.4 - 19.2) that Airspeed Vertical created was only the beginning of the significantly increasing 4-way averages that most recently ended with a 34-point advantage of 4-way over 8-way at Crystal Coast 2024 (273 - 239).

Arizona Airspeed's world champion lineup of 2022 and 2024 created the 34-point difference, even though GKXP8 won with the 23.9 record average of 2016 last year and reduced the previous differences of 2020 and 2022. The next outdoor world championship in Eloy 2026 could widen the gap once again to the advantage of the 4-way event. France (Aethers), United States (Golden Knights or Arizona Airspeed), Belgium (NMP PCH HayaBusa) are already pushing each other to new scoring heights in 4-way outdoor competition, while XP8 is in a rebuilding phase. The Qatar Falcons will probably feature the highest 8-way performance level this year at the FAI Outdoor World Cup 2025.

FAI World Championship 1999			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open Top 6		15,7,13	B,12,E,3	20,K,11	23,H,J	F,2,8	D,6,P,22	N,A,M,G,16	21,L,14	10,C,4	1,9,O	Total	Avg
1	Arizona Airspeed	US	22	25	20	20	16	22	25	19	21	21	211	21.1
2	Russia	RU	20	23	20	23	14	19	26	19	22	23	209	20.9
3	Maubeuge	FR	15	21	22	23	13	21	26	19	20	20	200	20.0
4	Australia	AU	15	18	12	10	12	16	20	14	14	16	147	14.7
5	Japan	JP	12	12	11	11	11	12	14	13	10	13	119	11.9
6	Germany	DE	13	13	12	12	9	10	15	10	11	10	115	11.5