posted Jun 8th, 2006 - Two Scandinavian countries launched their 2006 season on May 27 (Denmark) and June 3 (Sweden). The NSL News story on May 27 briefly reported what happened in Belgium and Denmark on the May 27 weekend. Mikael Toft, DaneZ member, provided additional information after the conclusion of the 8-round competition. The NSL News will follow up with the meet story from Sweden.

The weather allowed only two rounds on the first day of meet in Denmark, which were completed within three hours before sunset. The remaining six rounds were done next day between sunrise and late morning and then again on the hours before sunset. These were busy hours for the Pink Skyvan, which was the jump plane for the competition.

Mikael Toft mentioned that the DaneZ were generally happy with the team performance, except the funneled exit in round six, which resulted in the 10-pointer and lowest DaneZ score of the meet. The members of the Danish national 4-way team were busy helping the other teams with jump preparations and enjoyed the casual approach to this competition. Team member Jesper Rasmussen also filled Kenneth Gadja's slot for the Elements and completed 12 meet jumps that day.

The other two teams of the Danish 4-way project, Vitesse and Elements, showed respectable performances over the eight rounds and were able to discover some weak areas to work on before the national championships, as Mikael Toft evaluated the progression of the team project.

A total of nine teams competed in Denmark, and the field included a lot of newcomers in 4-way Formation Skydiving competition. SkyXtreme was one of these new teams and had trained for almost three weeks in DeLand, including wind tunnel training at SkyVenture Orlando, to prepare for the first competition season.

Three of the SkyXtreme members have been in the sport for only two years. Mikael Toft could already see the potential of the team to become part of the 4-way project one day. SkyXtreme won the A Class competition with a 9.0 average, which tied the highest recorded A Class meet average of all meets this year.

The Gokkers were another example for the Danish program on the grass root level, which combines two experienced competitors with two newcomers in the sport. Mikael Toft commented that the program works well and brings new skydivers into 4-way competition:

"We have seen Formation Skydiving competition grow in Denmark in the past years. More people go to the wind tunnels since England has opened two new ones and is nearby, and it pays of when we look at the overall standard of personal skills for the single person."

The Danish DFU Open also provided prizes for winners and participants. The NSL handicap system was used to determine the winners. Prizes were sponsered by Larsen & Brusgaard, Performance Designs, FSU and the DZ restaurant, and the winners were SkyXtreme, Joyride, Vitesse, Elements and Normannerns.

Mikael Toft said that the event was a great success with a lot of fun, and it will be repeated at the national championship of Denmark this year. The DaneZ will now move on with more wind tunnel training this week and a 7-day training camp in Germany before the World Meet 2006.