posted Feb 19th, 2006 - The 8-way competition at the Valentine's Meet in Eloy turned out to be a duel between Arizona Airspeed for the USA and Ex3mo for Italy. None of the 4-way teams on site decided to join with another team to compete in the 8-way event, as well. However, Team Fastrax is still in Eloy for more 4-way training.

The new Fastrax line-up began the day after the meet with an early training session at SkyVenture Arizona. After a short break, Fastrax continued with a serious of back-to-back training jumps. Next on today's training agenda were the remaining four rounds of Saturday's competition to complete a 10-round meet through the whole dive pool. The NSL News plans to meet with Fastrax in the afternoon for a live interview and a brief review of the meet performance.

The NSL News already met with Airspeed's new member Thomas Hughes yesterday and asked him for his feedback after the first 4-way competition with Airspeed Velocity. He said that the new 4-way line-up had a great time. Especially the positive team dynamics laid the great foundation for a surprising performance at this point: "We made a total of four training jumps in 4-way before the meet. We were all surprised how well the 4-way jumps went."

The NSL News was interested in his first experiences with 8-way on the very top level. Airspeed's 8-way team completed approx. 85 jumps with the new line-up, and Thomas Hughes had to learn many new things:

"The communication is surely very different. I have to keep my head way up all the time and try to see as much as I can. My piece partner is Craig Girard, and I am so fortunate that I can study the way he communicates with the whole team. We already have a great communication within our piece, and I keep on learning things."

The Airspeed veterans do not expect the 8-way team to perform right away on the same level where Airspeed finished the 2005 season. The first round of the 8-way competition gave evidence that Airpeed 2006 needs some time to become familiar with the whole dive pool, the techniques and the fast pace.

However, round two was already a different experience. The fast 3-block sequence made the communication easier, and Airspeed picked up the pace compared to round one. Result was a convincing 20-pointer, which separated the two 8-way teams by additional six points.

The performance in round two did not only look like Airspeed at the end of the 2005 season. The Airspeed members also confirmed that it felt just right: "This jump already felt like our jumps last year", said Eliana Rodriguez and Andy Delk, and the whole team was excited after that jump.

The Italian 8-way team Ex3mo has a hard time to keep up. The team completed 100 training jumps within one week before the Valentine's Meet. Round 1 was a good start for Italy, however, Ex3mo was already handicapped after one of the strongest team members, former Sinapsi PD member Marco Arrigo, pulled a muscle in his shoulder the day before the meet.

Marco Arrigo said that it happened at one of yesterday's exits. He has been under pain medication ever since and was still icing the shoulder when the NSL News met with the team. However, Arrigo and his team are committed to complete the meet. He added: "We have on off-day tomorrow, that will help. I will be okay to add another 100 trainig jumps next week."

All 4-way jumps of the competition can be viewed on the NSL-TV page of the event, the 8-way jumps will be added round by round today. Round three is currently in progress. Stay tuned.