posted Oct 30th, 2006 - Last week's USPA Nationals 2006 kept the NSL News busy enough to put other stories on a hold for a whole week. There is still a lot of material for follow-ups on the event in Eloy, which will be posted piece by piece. The NSL News now goes back to the story of the Fun Flag history, which has not been completed yet.

The last part of the story was posted with the NSL News story on October 7. Canadian team videographer Billy Porter had reported how he stole the Fun Flag out of Jack Jefferies' hand at the award ceremony of the World Meet in 2001.

Pal Bergan from Norway had followed the development of the Fun Flag story on Omniskore in 2001 with great attention, as well. Hardly anybody knows the history of Formation Skydiving competition better than the former Norwegian national competitor and FAI/IPC official of many positions.

He contributed to the progression of the sport in many ways and was a member of IPC's Development Working Group, which set the foundation to give the sport a new direction into the modern ages of Public Relations and Sports Marketing. Pal Bergan is still one of the two IPC Delegates for Norway. Here is his input to the Fun Flag story:

"In Vichy 1988, several countries were looking at the Fun Flag as a cool reminder of a cool meet. It was even attempted to borrow it from the US team once during the competition. This resulted in the team placing a guard by the flag for the remainder of the competition, always one present at the tent as long as the flag was up. They may have forgotten this, but it seemed obvious to many others.

After a delicate maneuver, if correctly recalled including a blonde lady, the flag suddenly disappeared from the pole. no doubt that there was fuss and confusion created among the US team that it had disappeared. Naturally, no-one that had anything to do with this dared to get close to the US jumpers, in fear of the Knights showing their secret tricks on unprepared northerners.

Next year, in 1989, it was correctly returned to the Knights. But the situation was a little different than described earlier: on the opening ceremony of the world championship all nations jumped into the stadium with their national flags. It was a beautiful sight, but one of flags was very hard to determine the nationality of, but closer to landing in front of the US team tent it became obvious. The Fun Flag was returned in a gentleman like manner.

If it is so that the Knights had forgotten this, it comes as a surprise to us and to the few knowing spectators lounging discretely by the US tent. At least it seemed to us that the Knights were happy of the return, but of course we might have been totally confused and misunderstood the entire situation by being excited and all after jumping from 3000 feet.

But, even with harsh winters, the Norwegians were not completely snowed in between these meets, and we maybe remember this in another light, as it was considered quite a challenging feat at the time, and a better story at the end."

The story is not over yet. There are still a few more contributions before the Fun Flag history brings us back to the present and the current location in Belgium.