posted Jan 9th, 2011 - The NSL News is taking a chance again by jumping ahead of the official scoring and using information from participants on the competition site. This did not work out perfectly accurate last time, as NMP-PCH Hayabusa's 20-pointer in Round 5 turned into a 19-pointer on the NSL leaderboard, which is also still unofficial. However, it gives the audience at least a pretty good timely impression of what is happening at the Dubai Championship 2011, and the official truth is usually not far away.

The scores for the slow Round 5 were somehow a milestone for the three top contenders. Nobody made it to the 20th point within working time, even though Hayabusa seemed to have been close. There is still work ahead for Aerodyne Aerokart and Hayabusa who are both at the very beginning with their new lineups. Arizona Airspeed's lineup in Dubai does not have to worry any longer about lifting the performance level or not.

The current NSL leaderboard shows most of the scores through Round 6, and Airspeed's video has been available since shortly after the team was done with this jump. Center Inside Andy Delk is taking care of the Airspeed on-line video services.

Airspeed's comments on Round 6 were interesting, as they remembered Round 10 at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2010:

"This round is very similar to the 2010 World Meet Round 10 where the French had the best jump I have ever seen. I'm crossing my fingers they didn't do it to us again but we'll have to see. If they did, I look forward to watching it! Our jump was pretty good. Great considering it had our nemesis, Block 22."

The sequences of Round 10 in Menzelinsk (22,B,16) and Round 6 in Dubai (16,O,J,22) did not only have Block 22 in common. Block 16 was also in the same sequence, and the Airspeed worries about another French dream performance became truth once again.

Craig Girard said that the Airspeed jump was awesome. However, new member Emmanuel "Manu" Sarrazin seems to like Block 16 and Block 22 just as much as his three world champion team mates.

France was the only team that completed the last Block 22 on the 4th page and also built the Compressed Accordeon of Block 16 in Round 6. That was too much for Airspeed and Hayabusa, and the 25-pointer brought Aerodyne Aerokart back to the top of the leaderboard with a 1-point advantage.

There is hope for the other top contenders in the world though. The French team is not exactly back to the same performance level of Menzelinsk 2010 yet. The sequence at the World Meet was slower, and the lineup with Jeremie Rollett scored 26 points. France with Manu Sarrazin scored "only" 25 points today...