posted Aug 17th, 2007 - The NSL News story on August 6 was one of the many that covered the FAI World Cup 2007. The meet in Russia had just begun, and Round 2 was completed.

The story's headline indicated that Hayabusa Defence won the round with smart engineering, and it was based on the observations by FAI Controller Dr. Rainer "Exi" Hoenle who updated the NSL News with insights from Russia on a regular basis, as after the completion of Round 2: "Belgium's Hayabusa Defence won their 27-pointer highscore by excellent engineering of the sequence."

The 27-pointer was the highscore for the round and moved the Belgium team up into the second position, tied with the Russian Sky Panthers and only one single point behind the new leader, France Maubeuge. Hayabusa Defence had started into the meet with a bad Round 1, as the NSL News story on August 13 explained.

The impressive comeback in Round 2 can now be viewed on NSL-TV. There were several requests for more details about Hayabusa's "smart engineering", and the NSL News was hoping to get the meet videos soon enough. Hayabusa's videographer Danny Jacobs provided the NSL News with the footage of the competition jumps, thanks to the whole team.

The NSL News reviewed once again Hayabusa's diary at the website to see how the team felt after the completion of Round 2. There were surely and understandably much more positive comments than after Round 1...:

"We already did Round 2 as well, and we timed a 27. We are still waiting for the judges to come back from their lunch break. Black Cat got scored: 24. France are hoping for a 25/26. But these are all speculations, nothing official yet.

Within a few minutes the opening ceremonie of the competition will start. And the 4-way is on a hold until 4:00 pm. We are not sure if we are allowed to jump the next round or if the 8-way competition will start.

We are very pleased about our jump, we ripped it hard and clean, and the 28th point was only moments away. We gave Luc a very nice 45th birthday present ;-) Before they judged our jump, we had the opening ceremonie. Lots of Russian politicians with speeches, and they presented us a nice air show, as well, with 5 Mig 27's Sukhoi. This is the best display team in the world, and we got 20 minutes in a row, incredible!! For now, we have prepared the next 5 jumps, and I think we will head off to the hotel.

Last update on Monday: Hayabusa Defence scored the highest score at a World Cup for a single round in history. The judges scored our jump, and we got a 27. Other teams: France - 26, Russia Black Cat - 24, Russia Sky Panthers - 23, Norway - 21. This makes the next classement for today: France - 47, Hayabusa Defence - 46, Sky Panthers - 46, Black Cat - 44, Norway: - 42.