posted Oct 6th, 2010 - Die NSL News story on 4 August 2010 was still coming from Menzlinsk in Russia, as a part of the live coverage of the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2010.

The story included the first 8-way videos and featured Rounds 1 to 3 of the competition between the three top contenders, Aerodyne Cypres Maubeuge's 8-way lineup, the Golden Knights and Russia's Sky Panthers Barkli. Another story on 4 August 2010 followed up with the videos of Round 4.

Then came a break, until the story on 10 August 2010 featured the 8-way videos of Round 10. The meet was realistically over by then, as France was too far ahead of the Golden Knights at that time. NSL-TV now features the missing videos, whch will bring back the drama that happened during the runup to the final round.

World Meet 2010		Round1	Round2	Round3	Round4	Round5	Round6	Round7	Round8	Round9	Round10	Total	Avg
Rank	8-way Open Class	3,21,N	6,20,9	E,G,17,5	K,16,2	12,C,22	B,D,M,1	7,15,J	13,L,P,11	4,18,O	10,14,19	Total	Avg
1	France	25	19(-1)	16(-1)	21	22	25(-2)	-	-	-	-	128	21.3
2	USA	23	17	18	20	22	27	-	-	-	-	127	21.2
3	Russia	20(-2)	19	16	17(-2)	22	20(-2)	-	-	-	-	114	19.0
4	Norway	8	5(-3)	6	7(-1)	7	7	-	-	-	-	40	6.7
5	Kazakhstan	0	1	0	0	0	0	-	-	-	-	1	0.2

The leaderboard after six rounds includes the penalties in parenthesis behind the score for the round. It shows that the Golden Knights had a clean meet so far, while Aerodyne Cypres Maubeuge had swallowed four point deductions at that time. Russia's 8-way team had even lost six points.

The penalties kept France and the USA closer together and created too much distance for the Russian team to seriously challenge the two top contenders. France was three points up on the US team after Round 4, and Russia had already fallen behind.

All three top teams tied their scores in Round 5, now featured on NSL-TV. Then the Golden Knights won two points back in Round 6, which made the competition very exciting with one single point between France and USA.

World Meet 2010 in Menzelinsk 8-way competition: Rounds 5 and 6

The international NSL News on-line audience was still confident that the Golden Knights would pull off and get ahead at this point in time. The US team was actually ahead in the 8-way poll all the time, even though there was great French participation in the poll, as well.

Almost 500 votes made it a quite realistic poll, and the audience never saw the Russian 8-way team as a serious contender for the gold or silver medals. The Russian performance was very impressive though, especially when considering the fact that the team was put together this year and that three members competed with the Sky Panthers in 4-way, as well. Vladimir Pavlenko, Oleg Shalamykhin and Sergej Shenin each won two bronze medals in Menzelinsk. Only Mathieu Bernier from France did better with two gold medals.

The next videos and penalty information will follow soon.