posted Jun 13th, 2010 - The French teams have completed their first Coupe de France 2010 competition in LeBlanc. Ten teams competed in the AAA Class, Armee de l'Air Nice, a French Air Force team (Grégory Patissou, Ludovic Hutter, Frédéric Chamelot, Edwige Bauer, with Olivier Plat on camera), won the competition after eight rounds.

The French national team, Aerodyne Cypres Maubeuge, completed ten rounds and is not eligible to win the Coupe de France events. The same counts for teams with members of the French national B-teams in the lineups.

Additional nine teams competed in the French Intermediate Class, which applies different rules. A local lineup from LeBlanc (Patrick Willien, Pamela Lissajoux, Nicolas Paille, Audrey Michel, David Jeanneau on camera) won this category.

Jun 12th, 2010		Round1	Round2	Round3	Round4	Round5	Round6	Round7	Round8	Round9	Round10	Total	Avg
Rank	AAAClass	B,9,21	J,P,E,10	G,M,7,L	4,Q,14	22,6,19	5,3,16	N,A,12,18	O,1,D,13	20,17,15	C,11,H,K	Total	Avg
1	Arizona Airspeed	29	28	33	23	19	-	-	-	-	-	132	26.4
2	Aerodyne Cypres Maubeuge	28	31	35	22	20	21	22	25	22	28	254	25.4
3	Perris Fury	27	23	30	21	19	-	-	-	-	-	120	24.0
4	Canada Evolution	24	26	29	20	17	-	-	-	-	-	116	23.2
5	SDC Rhythm XP	23	23	27	18	17	-	-	-	-	-	108	21.6

The same rules apply for the 8-way competition in France. The national team may compete but is not eligible to win the French Cup. Aerodyne Cypres Maubeuge completed all ten rounds and finished with an 18.2 average. Five other French 8-way teams attended the competition, as well.

There was also a guest team competing in the Intermediate Class. The NSL News had introduced the Irish team Fast Air with the NSL News story on 23 April 2010. The Fast Air members mentioned during the live NSL Talk that they were planning to attend one of the Coupe De France events.

The Irish team finished with a 14.5 average after eight rounds and outscored all the French 4-way teams in the Intermediate Class on competition site. The best French team in this category posted a 9.6 average.

The French national 4-way team did not have any serious competition live on site. In fact, there seems to be only one other top contender at the moment that could challenge the French team at all: the reigning 4-way world champions of Arizona Airspeed.

Guillaume Bernier, Mathieu Bernier, Julien Degen and Jeremie Rollet, with Olivier Henaff on camera delivered another stellar 10-round performance in France. It was the second outdoor meet for the French team where they did not score below 20 points for a round.

The 20-pointer in Round 5 was also the only one in the 10-round meet. National coach Jérôme David had mentioned earlier jokingly that his team is aiming to skip the 20-point level and go straight to the 21-pointer as the lowest score. This one was close.

Mathieu Bernier had his only real life test this year before he will compete in 4-way and in 8-way for France at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2010. His competition schedule at the French Cup was more challenging than it will be in Menzelinsk.

Aerodyne Cypres Maubeuge is currently in 2nd place on the leaderboard behind Airspeed. This is only the case because the placings are according to the meet average. The teams at the Midway Meet in Ottawa are currently trying to complete Round 6.

The French team is still up by four points over Airspeed after five rounds. Airspeed won Round 4 by a point but had to accept a 19-pointer in Round 5. The French scores for all ten rounds are already posted. Airspeed still has five rounds to avoid the first defeat in an outdoor competition.