posted Sep 10th, 2007 - It is a very unfortunate situation if a team ends up in 3rd place with a 23.0 average. The Golden Knights were in that situation at the end of the 4-way competition at the USPA Nationals 2007.

The great performance of the Golden Knights was not good enough to win this year's championship, and the reason was that Airspeed Odyssey has increased the 4-way standards to a new performance level. It is fair to say that Odyssey's scoring average is now at a 25.0 average level (22.2 - 23.0 - 26.0 - 23.5 - 25.3) after the five skydiving competitions of the 2007 season, not considering the 28.0 average at the World Challenge 2007.

It is even more unfortunate to finish a 10-round meet with a 24.4 average and end up in second place, as it happened to Team Fastrax Red. The current scoring average of Fastrax Red is around 24.0 going up (22.7 - 24.7 - 24.4), not considering the 27.9 average at the tunnel competition.

It was already the second consecutive meet for Fastrax Red with no score for a single round below 20 points. It was still not good enough to get even close to Airspeed Odyssey. The Arizona team continued the 20+ series and has not scored below 20 points since Round 9 of the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2007. That makes it a total of 31 competition jumps above 20 points. It will be interesting to see if any competition draw at any meet will eventually be able to create a sequence that would force Airspeed Odyssey to accept a lower score.

Perris Aftermath, Perris Katalyst and Cross Keys Vision won the USPA medals in the AAA/Advanced Class. CSC Rhythm was actually in third place but competed as a guest team.

There was drama in the finish of the AA/Intermediate Class competition. Cross Keys Air Pollution was six points behind the leader after Round 7, Air Force Ascent. Air Pollution did not give up and turned the 6-point deficit into a 1-point difference in Rounds 8 and 9. The excitement was already on a very high level when the teams were waiting for the scores of Round 10. The NSL News found the Air Pollution members anxiously awaiting the scores of Round 10 in the auditorium and got a few words from the team (see video).

It turned out that Air Pollution won the missing point in Round 10, and both AA/Intermediate Class teams had to put their jumpsuits back on for a jump-off.

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The viewing of the jump-off videos on DZ-TV was even more exciting, of course. The NSL News was still around both teams when the judges were working on the jump-off round, and the situation in the hangar can be reviewed by clicking here.

Cross Keys Air Pollution won the jump-off round by two points (14 - 12) over the Air Force team and takes the gold medals back to the MidAtlantic Skydiving League headquarters at Cross Keys. The Chicago home team SDC Quattro won the bronze medals after winning the last two rounds clearly over the other Air Force line-up, Invictus.

NSL-TV keeps collecting videos of the 4-way and 8-way competition, which will be uploaded very soon. Videos of the award ceremony and an interview with Dan BC will follow whenever time allows. The first round of the 8-way competition is complete, and the weather hold has been lifted. The 8-way teams are back in the air - and a new weather hold was just announced for the 8-way event.