posted Sep 7th, 2003 - Wondering about all the penalties in round one? Well, the judges obviously decided to pull through with their new policy regarding certain block techniques. Like it or not, at least they are consistent with their surprise action. Many of the top teams were caught with their "old" techniques.

Four of the five top contenders lost points due to penalties, and all of them for the same reason that the NSL News explained yesterday.

France, Norway and Italy had centerpoint issues with Block 12 (Zipper - Star), while the U.K. team, Sebastian XL, did Block 1 (Snowflake - Offset) in a way that the judges did not accept. Only the Golden Knights went through the sequence without problems and took the lead.

Even the French home team had to go through the penalty pain at the very end of their jump. They finished with the 18th point in time after a nice and clean skydive, and the crowd was already cheering since no penalties were indicated at the first Omniskore view.

Then the lights went red for a while, and the judges used up a lot of time to think after reviewing the video once again. Apparently they decided to make it fair and consistent and deducted two points of the French score for a questionable Zipper - Star at the very end.

At least, the judges earned some respect by showing their motivation to be consequent. The story behind the "new policy" in the judging room will follow later.

The Golden Knights were finally rewarded with the highest score for this round after their painful experiences yesterday during the last training jumps. The U.S. team had obviously decided to make it safe and sacrifice faster times and higher scores for safety. It paid back.

Team captain John Hoover explained yesterday that the team would finally change their technique to make sure they would not get in trouble.

After Dan BC and Jerome David discussed the issue with the judges yesterday, which seemed to open the door for the trained techniques, the Golden Knights still peferred to be on the safe side and went the longer ways, especially on Zipper - Star. It was a smart move. The U.S. team has taken the lead. The 4-way Women's event is on stand-by.