posted Apr 4th, 2007 - Three more days are left until the next competition will be covered live by the NSL News, Bodyflight Bedford's World Challenge 2007. Airspeed Odyssey will be a part of this competition, as well, and NSL-TV will just have completed the coverage of the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2007 when new footage of the Arizona team will become available.

The videos of Round 9 were uploaded today and can now be viewed on NSL-TV. The third round on the second day of the competition in DeLand was a continuation of the previous rounds on Sunday at the top of the leaderboard.

Team Fastrax was attacking, and Airspeed Odyssey barely managed to defend the 3-point lead. The Golden Knights fell further behind. This time, Fastrax was significantly ahead of Odyssey at the end of the working time and missed the completion of Block 6 (Stardian - Stardian) and the 20th scoring point only be a few inches (35.08 seconds).

Airspeed Odyssey completed the second Stardian at 35.84 seconds and tied Fastrax' 19-pointer. Nothing changed on the very top of the leaderboard. It was no surprise for the Golden Knights to end up two points behind the two well trained leaders in a technically challenging round.

Team captain Brian "BK" Krause was much aware of the fact that the team still had a lot of work to do in the technical area. Fastrax and Odyssey were ahead with their training schedule at that point in time. The Golden Knights will focus on the technical fine-tuning from here on and spend more time with DeLand Majik 4-way world champion Solly Williams in DeLand.

Gary Smith has been working with Team Fastrax this year, and the results of this cooperation have become obvious. The team seems to have caught up with the experts from Arizona. The Golden Knights are hoping for the same results of their work together with Solly Williams.

The intense training schedule this year for Norway's new Arcteryx line-up and their work with Gary Smith showed some results in Round 9, as well. Arcteryx is already well trained in the technical area, and the Norwegian team was able to keep up with the Golden Knights in this round.

The prizes for the Skins Game were once again on a higher level in Round 9. A total of $450 cash was waiting for the winner after handicap, sponsored by Dr. Joel Shugar's Nature Coast EyeCare Institute ($300) and Bev Suits ($150). It was the highest amount of cash for a single round so far.

It was not Team Fastrax this time that ended up on the top after the calculations by the NSL Shugar/O'Connor Handicap System. The German all-female team Chicas recovered early enough from a competition that had not made the team members very happy so far.

The Chicas had almost completed the team's first training camp this year and seemed to be tired and off pace going into the 10-round competition. The scores of the first eight rounds were below last year's performance level where the Chicas had posted a 12.3 average at the Malevsky Cup 2006.

The $450 cash of the Skins Game in Round 9 paid back for the painful experiences on the first day of the competition. The Chicas scores for the four rounds on Sunday were back to last year's level and serve as the foundation for the 2007 season. The Chicas are aiming at the status of the national team in the female category this year.

Round 10 of the Shamrock Showdown will follow tomorrow. The NSL News will then move to Great Britain and set office at the Bodyflight Bedford wind tunnel for a few days. The event will be brought to the valued NSL News audience as if it was a normal skydiving competition. Stay tuned and visit the NSL Forum.