posted Aug 17th, 2005 - The NSL News has reported an annual 3-way race for the national championship of Austria for several years. Three teams are usually prepared to charge for the national gold medals in the beautiful European country in the Alpes, home of the musical "The Sound of Music": Team Fila, Monkey Circus and Matrix.

These three teams have battled meet by meet ever since Austria joined the European Skydiving League in 2003. Matrix finished in the Austrian top position most of the times and also represented the country as the national team at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2004 in Croatia.

This year's national championship of Austria took place last week (August 12 - 15) in Graz, and Matrix had to give up the top spot. In fact, the former 3-way race turned into a 2-way battle for the 2005 championship title. Only Team Fila and Monkey Circus were in serious contention for the gold medals. Matrix ended up far behind in third place with a 12.9 meet average.

It was still a very exciting competition between Team Fila and Monkey Circus. Both teams had trained and competed to get ready for the Austrian championship. Monkey Circus visited Skydive DeLand in March 2005 for a training camp with DeLand Fire member Shannon Pilcher, competed at the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2005 and opened the 2005 season with a 12.1 average.

Monkey Circus competed again with an alternate line-up in May in Austria (9.3 average) and came back with the original line-up for the June meet of the Austrian/European Skydiving League (15.0 average). The last test before the Austrian championship was the league meet in July (17.0 average).

Team Fila attended the same three meets of the Austrian league and kept the upper hand (13.0 - 16.2 - 18.0), except in July when Monkey Circus won by two points after four rounds. Team Fila also competed at the Malevsky Cup 2005 at the beginning of July and finished with a 14.2 average after ten rounds. The league meet on July 30 in Austria was also the last test for Fila.

Austrian Nationals 2005		Rd1	Rd2	Rd3	Rd4	Rd5	Rd6	Rd7	Rd8	Rd9	Rd10	Total	Av.
Rank	Team	E-18-Q-N	11-D-L-M	4-G-16	13-15-21	B-F-9-8	2-19-1	J-17-K-12	5-O-3	20-22-6	14-H-10	Total	Avg
1	Fila	19	19	14	13	22	13	17	16	13	14	160	16.0
2	Monkey Circus	18	21	15	13	22	14	15	14	11	11	154	15.4
3	4-Matrix	8	16	14	13	17	13	11	13	11	11	129	12.9

The Austrian championship two weeks later was just as tight between Fila and Monkey Circus as the last ASL/ESL meet had already shown. Fila won the opening round by one point before Monkey Circus took control of the meet between rounds two and six. The meet situation was identical with the scores at the end of July when Monkey Circus had a 2-point lead after four rounds. Monkey Circus even increased the lead to a 3-point advantage before going into round seven.

The situation changed dramatically in the last four rounds. Team Fila won each remaining round by at least two points and turned the 3-point deficit after six rounds into a 6-point victory after ten rounds to finished with a 16.0 average.

Monkey Circus had to settle for the second place with a 15.4 average after an exciting competition.

Matrix tied one highscore in round four and took the third place. Fila is the new Austrian 4-way champion and will represent Austria as the national team at the World Championship 2006 in Germany.

Team Fila and Monkey Circus teamed up for the 8-way event and easily added another set of medals to the 2005 championship awards with the first place in 8-way.