posted Mar 31st, 2006 - Round 6 of the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2006 has already been posted for a day. The NSL News has already covered the performance of several teams in the AAA/Open Class competition with stories and interviews, including the three teams on the top of the leaderboard, Sinapsi PD, DeLand Fire and Arcteryx.

Team Fastrax competed already the second time this year. The NSL News met the new line-up with John Hart, Niklas Hemlin, Mark Kirkby, Doug Park and Steve Redinbo in February at the SSL Valentine's Meet 2006 in Eloy, Arizona.

The meet stories of the Valentine's Meet included the usual evaluation of the teams' performances, and the NSL News story on February 20 also provided a live interview with the Fastrax members after the conclusion of the competition in Eloy. NSL News stories in November and December 2005 had already introduced the new line-up and the Fastrax plans for 2006 (see NSL Archives 2005).

Fastrax finished the 6-round meet in February with a 20.2 average and posted a 20.6 average after the 10-round meet in DeLand. The first meet in Eloy was a test for the new line-up and served mostly to determine the starting position at the beginning of the 2006 season, after the approx. 150 first training jumps.

The competition in Eloy gave Fastrax the first experiences, which were needed to evaluate the team performance and then create a training plan for the next phase. Fastrax completed only a few training jumps between the Valentine's Meet and the Shamrock Showdown and has only worked on technical development of the team skills and a continuity plan so far.

The results were obvious for the experts in other top teams. Pete Allum of Sinapsi PD and Gary Smith of DeLand Fire both mentioned in their meet evaluations for the NSL News that they knew what Fastrax has been working on, and they also saw the team's technical progress. The Fastrax related excerpts of the recent interviews with Pete Allum and Gary Smith can be viewed by clicking here.

Pete Allum had talked to the Fastrax members before the meet. They said that the training was focused on techniques, there has not been any speed training until this point. Gary Smith watched some of the Fastrax competition jumps while the videos were dubbed during the meet and some additional ones on NSL-TV.

The DeLand Fire member explained that it was important for Fastrax to clean up the block techniques first of all: "They come from three different backgrounds, and they need to consolidate and come up with a plan on one technique. And that's where they are right now."

Mark Kirkby represents the Airspeed style, Doug Park brings in the DeLand Majik techniques, while John Hart and Niklas Hemlin have developed their own Fastrax style in the past two years. The result of this whole input will most likely become a new and different Fastrax 2006 style.

Gary Smith did not expect Fastrax to come up with more than what they showed at the Shamrock Showdown: "I don't think they have done enough jumps where we could expect them to flow through stuff. I think, from watching it, they look a little bit stuck in some of their random work. But I think that's the phase that they are in."

He believes that the team is on the right track in the long term: "They are doing the right thing. They need to come up with a technique, and technically they look very good, I think."

Round 6 is just another example of what Pete Allum and Gary Smith both talk about in the interviews. Fastrax delivers another technically clean and well defined performance. Only a slow start into the jump after a steep Cataccord exit stopped Fastrax only two random transitions and shortly behind the highest score of the round.

The earlier rounds had already confirmed that Fastrax delivered well defined and trained techniques. The next training phase will probably add the speed training. The NSL News will follow up with direct feedback from the Fastrax headquarters very soon. This will include information at which next competition the team will show the results of the next training phase.