posted Oct 25th, 2005 - The first day of the FAI World Cup 2005 and its three rounds in each event did not bring any extraordinary surprises. The 8-way event has already been looked at after the completion of the three rounds on Monday morning. The 8-way teams will also begin the competition on Tuesday morning.

The 4-way Open competition has all the teams on the top of the leaderboard, which were expected to contend for the FAI medals in Eloy. Only the Russian team Skylight-Barkli fell too far behind for a serious chance for medals. A total of four point deductions in the three rounds was too much damage for the Russian team to keep up with the other medal contenders.

At the same time, the next teams in line, Norway's Arcteryx and Germany's FSC Remscheid, are pushing each other to new heights and are ready to swallow any team that falls out of the top contention. The competition is tight at each level of the leaderboard.

Airspeed Odyssey seems to apply a similar approach to the World Cup competition as Airspeed's 8-way line-up has shown and confirmed earlier. No surprise, Craig Girard has been guiding the 4-way team to a more aggressive attitude, as well. The result is obvious: Odyssey is four points ahead of the field after three rounds.

The biggest gain for Odyssey came in round three. Three teams were still tied in first place after two rounds (Odyssey, Black Cat and DeLand Fire), and Extreme.RU was only one point behind, when Odyssey all of a sudden ran away with the ball in round three with its 34-pointer.

An interesting aspect of this highscore is the fact that Odyssey won the round so clearly with a mirror-imaged engineering. All three Russian teams did the same, while DeLand Fire and Fastrax chose memory for round three. However, Odyssey was fast and aggressive and now leads the field by four points.

DeLand Fire members were impressed by the Odyssey performance and compared the current situation to the competition with the Golden Knights at the USPA Nationals 2005. They are confident that they will still come back later. The new USPA 4-way champion lost two points due to infringements and used the option of a re-judging after the deduction in round two, which did not change the score for the round.

Fire had won round two with a 19-pointer in time over Black Cat and had to settle with 18 points on the scoreboard. The other point deduction for Fire came in round three. None of the other five top contenders has received a point deduction yet.

The Norwegian team Arcteryx seems to be exactly at the point of the team progression where it was planning to be at in Eloy. Arcteryx has moved closer to the very top of the leaderboard and currently holds the spot right behind the best teams in the world. Arcteryx has increased the speed and energy level with great results so far.

The German team FSC Remscheid, however, stays as close to Norway as it had planned for. Remscheid is not the current German national champion in 4-way but still represents the top competition level in Germany this year. Arcteryx, Skylight-Barkli and FSC Remscheid have currently put some distance between this group and the next teams in line, the DaneZ and France.

The French 4-way team in Eloy shows one line-up of the new 4-way generation, which currently prepares for the return to gold medal contention in 2008. Erwan Pouliquen, former French 4-way medalist and currently the technical coach for the 8-way team, fills one of the 4-way slots in Eloy for one sick team member.

The Army team leads the competition of the three UK teams clearly, and the Brazilian team CTR Optimum has ellbowed its way into the competition between 4-Motion and South Park. The Lithuanian team Magic 4 closes the field in its first international appearance with a 10.7 average after three rounds.