posted May 7th, 2010 - The NSL News has to go back to the story on 4 May 2010, which covered Arizona Airspeed's Eliana Rodriguez' competition career between 1999 and 2010, including a video with several competition jumps of the earlier days.

The story mentioned that Eliana Rodriguez was the first female 8-way world champion. A message from an attentive visitor brought to the NSL News attention that this is not really correct.

According to the rules, and also very practically, the team videographer is a team member and receives the same honors and medals as the competitors that the videographer focuses on. There was a female videographer who won an 8-way gold medal before Eliana Rodriguez received hers in 2004.

Elena Vertiprakhova was filming the Russian 8-way team that defeated Arizona Airspeed in one of the most exciting 8-way battles in history. It required a jump-off and then the application of additional tie-breaking rules before Russia won the second consecutive 8-way world championship title in 2003.

Airspeed and Russia had battled it out at the World Meet 2001 in Spain, as well, and Russia won for the first time. Elena Vertiprakhova was not filming the Russian 8-way team by then. She joined the team in 2002 and won her gold medal in 2003 after a flawless performance over eleven rounds without any point deductions caused by her or her team.

Russia continued with a strong 8-way lineup in 2004, Evolution Pro, and Elena Vertiprakhova was filming this team, as well. In fact, she tried to help defend the Russian 8-way title at the World Meet 2004 in Croatia.

This was the meet when Eliana Rodriguez won her first gold medal with Arizona Airspeed after another 9-round battle, this time with France and Russia. All three teams were separated by only five points after the nine rounds in Croatia.

Elena Vertiprakhova was not the only Russian female competitor who competed for the gold medals in 2004. Alena Chistova was the second female competitor of a Russian national team, and Elena Vertiprakhova was filming her in 8-way action with Evolution Pro.

Elena Vertiprakhova and Alena Chistova tried together to fend off Arizona Airspeed's challenge with Eliana Rodriguez and ended up in 3rd place, two points behind France and five points behind Airspeed.

Elena Vertiprakhova is filming Evolution Pro from Russia at the World Cup 2005

Elena Vertiprakhova and Alena Chistova both continued with Evolution Pro in 2005 and won another bronze medal together for Russia at the World Cup in Eloy. The NSL News found some old footage in the archives that features Evolution Pro at the World Cup 2005.

They also came back with the Russian 8-way team in 2006 and won the next set of bronze medals for Russia at the World Meet in Germany. Airspeed with Eliana Rodriguez won the World Cup 2005 and staid ahead of Russia in 2006, as well. However, the gold medals in 2006 went to France for the first time, and Eliana switched to 4-way in 2007.

Elena Vertiprakhova and Alena Chistova added another 8-way season and won silver medals together at the World Cup 2007 in Russia. Airspeed did not attend this meet.