posted Aug 8th, 2006 - The current weather hold at the FAI World Meet 2006 in Germany allows the NSL News to catch up with yesterday's events. The first round of the 4-way competition was completed in both events, and two teams of the female category already did their second jump.

France and Great Britain's team Airkix compete in their own league, which is at least the impression after round one. The Russian Ladybirds still got a 12-pointer on the scoreboard after the big mistake in the meet opener, which tied the score for the 3rd place. Round two will probably show whether the Russian team will have to fight for the bronze medals or follow the two leaders.

Several teams seem to be in contention for the best position after the medal rankings. If the Ladybirds separate themselves from the rest of the field, then this race for the 4th place might become a real horse race. It is still a race for the bronze medals at the moment.

Only one round has been completed in the 4-way Open Class so far, and the competition was already as exciting as expected. The Russian Sky Panthers Barkli are as strong as the German organizers expected it when they placed the Russian team on top of the scoreboard prior to the start of the competition.

The score of 21 points on the current leaderboard does not show that Sky Panthers Barkli actually completed 22 points within working time. Three judges did not accept the 21st point, which reduced the score for the round to 21 points. No other team came close to the 22nd point, and the 21-pointer was still one point ahead of the team in 2nd place, DeLand Fire.

The US team had a slow start and picked up the pace page by page. Two judges pushed the button 21 times in working time, not enough to make it count for a 21-pointer. DeLand Fire finished one point behind the Russians. The scoresheet made the US team feel lucky to have this score posted.

Two judges (Inge, Bob) had a final score of 18 points for the US team. One of these two judges marked even three infringements (Bob) but had 21 points in working time for his 18-pointer.

Two other judges (Rina, Thierry) counted only 20 points within working time and busted Fire at two different situations. They had 19 points as the final score. The 5th judge in the panel (Zeljko) had a clean scoresheet with 21 points in time. None of the judges had 20 as the final score, which turned out to be DeLand Fire's result on the scoreboard.

Sinapsi PD's 19-pointer included an infringement at the completion of Block 20 (Piver - Viper) on the second page. The 3-2 decision by the judges reduced the Italian score from 20 to 19 points after a clean and strong performance.

The French 4-way team was hit the hardest of all top teams. Two infringements (3-2 and 4-1) reduced the 19 points in time to a 17-pointer on the scoreboard. Two judges (Rina, Inge) penalized the infringements in both situations, the other three judges saw only one infringement.

This means that three of the five judges had 18 points for the French team, and two judges had only 17 points for the French team as their individual verdict. The minority won since the the judging system works by decisions made point by point and does not consider the individual final score.

The French team was moving as quick as usual, however, the lack of training did not give the team the synchronization needed to keep up with the trained teams. The leader is already four points ahead of France after only one round.

There was only one top contender with a completely clean shore sheet, which continued what the judges already saw at the official training round. Belgium's Spa Hayabusa is tied in 3rd place with Italy and 19 points. Hayabusa has obviously cleaned up the team's performance and might get closer to the top medal contenders as they would like to see that.

The meet is still on a weather hold, and the NSL News will be back with more weather information very soon.