posted Sep 16th, 2011 - The NSL News preview of the Russian Nationals 2011 on 14 September 2011 mentioned that a new 4way world record for a single round would not be out of reach in Round 3. As expected, the Sky Panthers Barkli speed experts seriously threatened their own 56-pointer mark with a 54-pointer this week.

In fact, only two other teams have ever scored higher than 54 points at an outdoor competition in the history of Formation Skydiving competition. The reigning 4way world champions from France, Aerodyne Aerokart, tied the Sky Panthers's 56-pointer at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2010 where NMP-PCH Hayabusa also posted a 55-pointer in the same round. The new 54-pointer is the 3rd highest score ever.

Sky Panthers Barkli also defended the national title successfully, and the order of the first three places is identical with the results of the Russian Nationals 2010. Only SportLoto replaced Kaktus Hunter in 4th place. Ocean 5 did not compete, and Illusions took the 5th place behind Sportloto. It was a high quality event with five teams scoring above the 20-average mark, even though the top teams were actually not very close to each other.

Russia 2011		Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	T	Avg
Rank	AAA Class	21,6,7	5,L,8	H,Q,P,J,E	G,13,19	1,C,18	B,16,O,14	A,D,17,M	3,15,10	9,2,4	F,22,11	T	Avg
1	Sky Panthers Barkli	22	22	54	19	21	23	34	19	22	22	258	25.8
2	Black Cat	21	19	48	19	21	22	30	17	21	18	236	23.6
3	Gradient Alpha	20	22	41	19	18	20	28	19	21	19	227	22.7
4	SportLoto	19	19	43	19	16	20	30	17	19	17	219	21.9
5	Illusions	20	19	44	13	17	20	27	13	16	17	206	20.6

The Top 5 teams all sent their best lineups into the competition. There was still a questionmark behind the performance level of the Sky Panthers, as the old and new champion had replaced Leonid Kazinets with World Cup 2011 alternate Nikolay Vylegzhanin, who is also a member of the Sky Panthers Barkli 8way lineup.

He had stepped in for Round 9 and Round 10 at the World Cup 2011 when Center Inside Leonid Kazinets had problems with his neck and when the Sky Panthers were chasing Paratec-Saar for the bronze medals. The Sky Panthers with Nikolay Vylegzhanin won the last two rounds by one point, but it was not enough to catch up with the Germans.

The videos of Round 9 and Round 10 below show this lineup in action in Germany. Nikolay Vylegzhanin then had the Center Inside slot for all ten rounds this week and won the national championship title in 4way with a record average.

Nikolay Vylegzhanin is surely not new to top 4way competition, the Sky Panthers picked their alternate very carefully. He was a member of Wild Wind, the Russian national 4way team at the World Meet 2003 in France. Then he trained and competed with Crossroad before joining the 8way lineup of Sky Panthers Barkli.

The 25.8 average this week brings the Sky Panthers back to the medal level of international 4way competition. It is very close to the performance and scoring level with former Center Inside Michail Kuznetsov who won the World Meet bronze medal last year in Menzelinsk where the competition draw was even faster.

The question is how the Sky Panthers will continue from here on. They could probably join Aerodyne Aerokart, NMP-PCH Hayabusa and Arizona Airspeed in the race for gold medals in Dubai 2012 if they get enough training with Nikolay Vylegzhanin who is better trained and more experienced in 4way than Leonid Kazinets who won the 8way bronze medal last year. Michail Kuznetsov was not competing in 8way. The same concept could work again with Nikolay Vylegzhanin who would probably still compete in 8way, as well. Time will tell...