posted Sep 13th, 2009 - The ESL Championship 2009 at Skydive Hibaldstow, United Kingdom, was already completed with all ten rounds in all four competition classes on Saturday.

The NSL News reported during the coverage that the 4-way delegation from the United Kingdom was seemingly running away with the ESL Spirit, the popular trophy of the European Skydiving League. Mostly the scores of the British AAA Class teams, with Satori on the very top, contributed to the clear lead after Round 8, according to the posted ESL rules.

The final scores after ten rounds had the United Kingdom with its four highest scoring teams (Satori - 213, Phobia - 143, Fend 4 Yourself - 127, Nuvision or Gr4vity - 125) still in 1st place with a total of 608 points. The four best Dutch teams (Meo - 144, Creeps - 119, Ignition - 114, Empat Laki Laki - 103) collected a total of 480 points, and the ESL Spirit would have remained in the United Kingdom.

However, updates from the competition site in Hibaldstow mentioned that the Dutch delegation won the ESL Spirit this year. The Netherlands had three teams in first places, Ignition in the AA Class, Creeps in the A Class and Meo in the Rookie Class. Only Satori won the AAA Class competition for the United Kingdom. The winner of the ESL Spirit 2009 was obviously determined based on a different scoring system, and the NSL News will follow up with the details.

More information of the lineups has been provided in the meantime. In fact, CamScore's Jo Bell sent the details of unknown lineups to the NSL News, while she was running the scoring and DZ-TV operation for the ESL Championship 2009, together with Andy Mansfield.

4XTT, the team in second place of the AAA Class competition, was actually already mentioned earlier this year. Only the team name was new to the NSL News. The story on 9 February 2009 introduced the lineup to the NSL News audience. The same story mentioned that Paul Hofstee, Sven Ibens, Wesley Claessens and Jacco van Eerden were planning to compete at the ESL Championship 2009.

David Grauwels, Hayabusa Defence member, who had provided profile information of the team members in February, said by then that this lineup has the potential to get to the 20-point average level. 4XTT was not very far away from this benchmark with the 19.4 average at the ESL Championship 2009.

The team, which competed for Belgium, even managed to tie Satori's 19-pointer in Round 7 and won Round 9 with a sole 23-pointer highscore. Team member Paul Hofstee, Dutch 4-way competitor for Dynamic Fource, will now go back to his own Dutch team and begin to focus on the 2010 season. Dynamic Fource is the Dutch national 4-way team and will represent the Netherlands at the World Meet 2010 in Russia.

Spinapsimo's lineup from from Italy included Steve Hamilton, who was responsible for the Sinapsi part of the team name. He had just competed with his own team at the FAI World Cup 2009 where he won a bronze medal for Italy.

Luca Stanga was a member of the Italian 8-way team Ex3mo, as the NSL News mentioned already yesterday. Ex3mo won the 8-way bronze medals at the World Meet 2008 in France.

Alessandro Giovannini competed with the Spin Team for Italy at the World Meet 2008 in France. The three team names (Spin, Sinapsi, Ex3mo) were combined for the new name at the ESL Championship 2009, Spinapsimo. The NSL News will follow up with more details of the event.