posted Feb 22nd, 2007 - Craig Girard is one of the busiest competitors and coaches. He travels all over the world and just came back from a trip to Australia before his new Airspeed Odyssey line-up competed at the Valentine's Meet last weekend. He leaves at the end of this week for a trip to Marocco.

The NSL News was very interested in feedback and information directly from the Airspeed headquarters in Eloy, Arizona. Craig Girard promised to take the time for a live interview this week, and he connected with the NSL News by telephone on Wednesday late afternoon, after a 12-jump training day with his team.

The NSL-TV interviews usually come along with videos of the live conversations. This was impossible this time, with Craig Girard in Arizona and the NSL News in Florida. However, the NSL News experimented with a few technical options and finally configured a way that made the quality of the recorded conversation good enough for broadcast.

The two parties on the east and west coast lost the telephone connection once, had to re-dial and pick up the conversation where it was interrupted. Result of the successful experiment was a recorded live interview of approx. 15 minutes that can now be listened to by clicking here.

Craig Girard comments the Airspeed Odyssey performance at the Valentine's Meet from his perspective. His team was already back in training after the completion of the meet last Sunday. It was the first time that the Valentine's Meet was a 10-round competition, and there was no 8-way event any longer.

Airspeed Odyssey's team captain and multiple world champion in 8-way did not miss the 8-way competition: "No. I don't miss it right now. I have done so much 8-way in my life. It's something that I love. But right now I am really loving that level of competition. 8-way was great, but we got only one or two dances over a year. We kept seeing how much we really missed the opportunity to compete, to push ourselves and measure ourselves."

Craig Girard provides insights of the new team dynamics with Mark Kirkby in the tail slot and explains Airspeed Odyssey's road to the 22.2 average last weekend. He sees the benefits that the old and new Airspeed member brings to the team with a very athletic life and training style.

The performances of the other AAA Class teams at the Valentine's Meet are also on the agenda of the interview. Craig Girard mentions that three of the members of the new French 4-way line-up have already trained and competed together when they were members of the French B-Team and before they were selected for the 8-way world champion team.

He clearly sees the potential that this French 4-way team might have a chance to win 4-way and 8-way at the World Meet 2008 in France. However, he commits to do whatever he can to make this very difficult: "I'm going to do everything I can do ruin their party."

Perris Fury received a lot of credit by Airspeed's team captain, as well, and he was impressed by AZ Directe's performance. Two of his former Airspeed teammates, Gary Beyer and John Eagle, are in Directe's line-up.

The FSL Shamrock Showdown 2007 is next on the Odyssey agenda, and the team will continue to travel and compete at other events. The wind tunnel competition in Great Britain, the Malevsky Cup 2007 and additional league meets in the USA are part of Odyssey's 2007 schedule. The FSL Shamrock Showdown 2007 is less than four weeks away.