posted May 5th, 2006 - The NSL News story on May 1 mentioned that Spa Hayabusa scored a new unofficial world record with the 45-pointer for the fast sequence of random formations (J-O-A-H-F) in round one of Belgium's 2006 season opener last weekend.

Additional information of the meet was not available by then. ESL manager Willy Boeykens posted all scores of the meet to the scoreboard of the ESL website today, and Hayabusa member Roy Janssen provided additional details of the competition in Belgium. The NSL scoreboard of the BST event includes the competition draw for each round.

The first competition of the Belgian Skydiving Trophy 2006 (BST) attracted a total of 17 teams to the hosting skydiving center in Moorsele. This is a new record participation already at the first BST meet in 2006. Seven teams had attended the May event in 2005 and 12 teams in June 2005.

Seven teams competed in the AAA Class last weekend, seven teams in the A Class and three teams in the Rookie Class. Four teams came back with the same team name from last year's BST season. All four teams signed up for the same competition classes, Spa Hayabusa and What's UP in the AAA/Open Class, Puzzle and Red Peppers in the A Class.

The A Class has been a very popular division in Europe. The AA Class was newly introduced for the 2006 season in Europe as the last effort to finalize the complete synchronization of the dive pools and competition classes between ESL and NSL. The NSL made adjustments for the Rookie Class exits in return. Belgian teams did not sign up for the new AA Class at the first competition of the 2006 season.

The two returning A Class teams in Belgium, Puzzle and Red Peppers, took the first two places in the 7-team A Class field and gave each other a tight race throughout the six rounds. Puzzle ended up in first place with a 2-point advantage and a 9.0 meet average.

The Belgian national team in 2006, Spa Hayabusa, finished the 6-round meet with a 21.3 average. The meet management had planned for a 10-round meet, however, bad weather forced the meet to be concluded after only six rounds.

The weather situation in Belgium with very cold temperatures was not pleasant for the teams at all and did not help the scores. Finally, additional strong winds, clouds and rain brought the competition to an end after six rounds.

The fast sequences of the competition came out of the hat at a live draw on site Friday evening and warmed up the minds of the teams and competitors more than the weather could. Jump plane in Moorsele was a Cessna Caravan.

The AAA Class competition featured the traditional rivalry between Belgium's military team, NMPV, that used to be the Belgian national 4-way team before Spa Hayabusa. NMPV represented Belgium at the Mondial 2003 in France. Spa Hayabusa pulled away from NMPV in 2004 and 2005, however, the Army team seems to have a successful comeback. NMPV managed to tie Spa Hayabusa's 16-pointer in round three and also posted the highest score of round six.

Spa Hayabusa still ended up 19 points ahead of NMPV with a 21.3 meet average and gave up a total of six points due to infringements and video misses. NMPV finished the meet with an 18.2 average. Spa Hayabusa lost two of these six points in the fast first round and still ended up with the new unofficial world record jump of 45 points. Hayabusa improved the team's own previous Belgian record of 34 points significantly. The Belgian officials sent the jump records to the IPC's Competition Committee and applied for recognition as the new official world record.

Hayabusa member Roy Janssen was satisfied with the team performance at the record jump. However, he commented that there remains a lot of room for improvements: "We did not perform well enough as a team, and with that we lost too many points unnecessarily. We have some hard work to do, but we are sure that we will solve these problems."

He also reported that the bad weather did not bother the meet atmosphere too much. Spa Hayabusa's team members and the Belgian military team together helped most of the teams with jump preparations and debriefing.

The next BST meet in Belgium will be the national championship of Belgium at the same time and is scheduled for May 25-28. This event will also be the official qualifyer for the World Meet 2006 in Germany.