posted Oct 16th, 2006 - The NSL News has begun with the coverage of the USPA Nationals 2006. Several stories were already related to the competition that will start on Sunday in Eloy. The event pages have now been added, and more stories will follow very soon.

The USPA Nationals 2006 are not the qualification event for the next World Championship of Formation Skydiving, 2006 is a so-called "off-year" for the US teams. However, there is still enough meaning in the race for the top spots on the AAA/Open Class leaderboard.

The bigger international competitions besides the World Championship (World Cup, Malevsky Cup) are still sanctioned by the International Parachuting Commission (IPC), and the participation is limited to a certain number of teams. Each country can send only up to four teams to these events.

There were already situations in the past where the placements at the USPA Nationals in the "off-year" mattered as of the eligibility for events sanctioned by the IPC. USPA has the authority to sanction US teams that would like to compete at international events.

These teams do not receive much financial or logistical support from their sanctioning membership organization. In fact, all US teams finance their trips to the events by themselves and even pay USPA for certain services like apparel. However, the qualification as the national teams and the additional slots at the IPC sanctioned international events have been very important and will once again be on stake next week.

The situation of the two Airspeed 4-way line-ups, Odyssey and Velocity, was covered with the story on October 13. The new team with three former DeLand Fire members and DeLand Majik's Solly Williams was introduced with the story on October 10. These three teams will be in contention for USPA's Open Class medals.

The best trained 4-way team of all top contenders this year is probably Team Fastrax. The new 2006 line-up with John Hart, Niklas Hemlin, Mark Kirkby, Doug Park and Steve Redinbo was formed at the end of the 2005 season. Several NSL News stories have covered the Fastrax progression this year.

The team plans are laid out for a 3-year period. The 2006 season has been the building year. The new Fastrax line-up has attended three competitions so far. The SSL Valentine's Meet 2006 in February 2006 was the team's season opener, and a 20.2 average was on the scoreboard after the 6-round event.

The FSL Shamrock Showdown 2006 was next on the Fastrax agenda. It was a 10-round competition in DeLand, and Fastrax increased the meet average to 20.6 in March.

There was a longer break from competition action for Fastrax before the team traveled to Russia in August. The NSL News witnessed and commented the 21.2 performance at the Malevsky Cup 2006 with several stories.

The Fastrax scoring progression (20.2 - 20.6 - 21.2) is obvious, and it fits to the team plans. There is a very good chance that the progression will continue next week. Fastrax had enough time between the Malevsky Cup 2006 and the upcoming USPA Nationals 2006 to take care of clean-up business and fine-tuning. The results might be seen in Eloy.

However, Fastrax is not out to win the USPA competition this year. In fact, Airspeed Odyssey has the longest time together of all the top contenders and is the favorite for the upcoming event. Fastrax has set the main team goal for next year when the USPA Nationals 2007 will be the qualification event for the world championship in 2008.

The third year is logically supposed to become the preparation year for the world championship. It is a fact that the US national team is always a top contender for the gold medals at any world championship. DeLand Majik and DeLand Fire have recently shown this at the world meets in 2004 and 2006.

Due to the 3-year plan, Fastrax can afford a casual approach to the competition next week in Eloy. It will still be a very serious test for the new line-up. The field of top teams at this year's USPA Nationals will not be much different than next year. In fact, the competition is tough and tight every year at the USPA event.

There is also a special challenge for each top team this year. Arizona Airspeed has the complete sweep in 4-way and 8-way in mind, and Fastrax will be one of the few teams that might be able to stop Odyssey and Velocity from taking the two top spots in the 4-way Open Class competition.