posted Jul 6th, 2006 - It has been only four weeks since the NSL News reported painful news from the Fastrax headquarters. The NSL News story on June 7 included the link to a Fastrax video, which was available on the Fastrax website. The video showed a training jump where Doug Park's nose broke after a collision with Mark Kirkby's leg at the completion of Block 21 (Zig Zag - Marquis).

The same story finished with the note that Niklas Hemlin was the next victim one week after the freefall accident. This time, the crime scene was the wind tunnel in Bedford. Team Fastrax had scheduled a quick trip across the Atlantic to test the wind tunnel in Great Britain, as the team reports on the Fastrax website:

"On May 16, 2006 Team Fastrax crossed the pond to visit our brothers in the United Kingdom. We had heard comments from a team that visited the Bodyflight wind tunnel; they said it was no different than the tunnels in the United States. We wanted to find out first hand so we scheduled a camp to the UK."

The camp report does not offer any details of the accident. However, the video shows the painful collision between Mark Kirkby's knee and Niklas Hemlin's nose, the first scenes after the exit out of the tunnel and the following trip to the local hospital.

This time, Mark Kirkby's left knee was too strong for a nose to handle a collision. His right leg had been in the way of Doug Park's nose a week earlier when Block 21 brought him and his Fastrax center partner together. Block 7 (Side Buddies - Side Buddies) connected Mark Kirkby's left knee and Niklas Hemlin's nose in a damaging way.

It was bad luck for the Swedish-American Fastrax point. The classical technique for Block 7, with a Zig Zag shaped setup, has both center positions turning the same direction, while the piece partners are cogging their turns with their piece partners to reduce the chances of a collision. Point and Tail are in a safe position with this technique.

However, many of the top teams include other setups for Block 7 in their continuity plans to have more options for more efficient engineering in specific situations. One of these additional setup options has a Side Body (Random Formation P) shaped formation at the beginning of Block 7.

Team Fastrax was practising this option when the accident happened. Due to the different setup, the turning directions are also different compared to the other techniques. In this case, the center positions (Mark Kirkby and Doug Park) are cogging their turns to avoid a possible collision, as well.

The front piece partners turn the opposite direction to apply this technique. Thus, Center Inside (Mark Kirkby) and Point (Niklas Hemlin) are now turning the same direction, as compared to cogging with the other technique. A collision during a cogged turn does not have a very strong impact, neither on the body nor on the turn.

The impact of a collision during a turn in the same direction comes with twice as much speed since legs, knees, heads and noses are spinning against each other. The video shows that there was contact only for a split second. However, speed, power and point of impact combined for a damaging collision, and the training day was over for the team.

Team Fastrax trains hard and the team members are in great shape. This accident did not slow down the efforts or change the training plans. Niklas Hemlin's nose had to be treated in the local hospital, however, Fastrax continued with the training as soon as he felt ready to go again.

Fastrax is one of the teams that is already officially registered for the Malevsky Cup 2006. The popular competition in Russia is this year's major international challenge for teams, which are not qualified for the World Meet 2006. The Malevsky Cup 2006 offers a $30,000 jackpot. Fastrax will be one of the top contenders for money and medals, and the NSL News will report live from the competition site.