posted Sep 19th, 2004 - The NSL News reported earlier on the 8-way situation in France. The French 8-way teams completed only seven rounds at the 2004 championship. Similar to the current situation in Russia, France has now two 8-way teams on world class medal level. Hautes Alpes is not the national 8-way team. It was formed after the Mondial 2003 with former 8-way members of the 1995, 1999 and 2003 teams. They do not train a lot together and compete just for the fun of competition. All members (Ferre, Grisoni, Losantos, Zunino, Ars, Negrier, Vazille, Auvray) already retired after many years of training and competition with the French 8-way teams. Hautes Alpes won the national championship after a very close race with LaPalisse Maubeuge, which is the new national 8-way team and will compete in Croatia for world meet medals (Sarrazin, Bernier, Martin, Leon, Rollett, Degen, Sorlin, Perin). Hautes Alpes' 19.3 average is the highest 8-way average in the world this year so far.

The LaPalisse Maubeuge members used to be in the French "B Team" of 2003, which was selected during the 2000 season in the "Collectif Espoir" group project. They have done two years of 4-way together (6th and 7th place at the World Cup in 2002). LaPalise Maubeuge is now the new "young" national team, and their goal is to win the 8-way sword in 2006. France has never won gold medals in the 8-way event to date. The team leader is Manu Sarrazin who was already member of the previous 2003 team.

Jerome David is happy with the development of the new 8-way team: "It was a wonderful thing to see both teams having such a tough competition. That's the first time we had such a race in France in the 8-way event." He sees his 8-way team in the same position as the Women's Class 4-way team. The 8-way team should medal and could win.