posted Dec 20th, 2007 - Yesterday's NSL News story covered the upcoming IPC Meeting in Paris, France. The article included information of the suggested change for Block 13 (Hammer - Hammer) and mentioned the expected discussion and evaluation of half-speed judging. The NSL News opens this discussion with a contribution by France's IPC Delegate Gillian Winter.

Gill Winter also oversees the French Formation Skydiving competition and initiated the participation of France in the NSL/ESL 4-way network. She submitted a French proposal to the attention of IPC President Graeme Windsor, FS Commitee Chair Fiona McEachern, Judging Commitee Chair Pia Berggren and the IPC Delegates of all countries in October 2007.

The NSL News will follow up with more information. The 4-way and 8-way community still has the opportunity to provide the IPC Delegates and the FS Committee with feedback directly from the playing field before the meeting in January. It is important for the officials of the sport to know what the athletes are thinking of this issue.

Half-Speed Judging in Formation Skydiving

By Gillian Winter

Over the years, the skydiving community has tried to improve the judging process for Formation Skydiving to reach the most accurate and fair assesments possible as the discipline progresses. Teams fly faster and faster and the top teams’ results are closer and closer.

During the last FS 4-way Open World Cup in August 2007, we again had a very close race between the top three teams Belgium, France and Russia. After 10 rounds, Russia was only one point behind Belgium and France and a jump off round was needed to declare a winner.

During this competition, the Russian team protested four times about some supposed judging mistakes and were very frustrated. The public viewing the jumps, amongst who were many experienced competitors, was also frustrated when it appeared that certain "absolutes" were not seen and penalised.

The closer the teams are, the more accurate the judging tool must be if we want to avoid situations where judging can interfere in the final ranking. Inevitably any process will generate "judgement call" situations but we need to work at a process that will reduce them as much as possible.

Considered as a potential and efficient new tool for viewing jumps, "half speed" viewing has, for a long time and by many first class competitors, been promoted as a solution. This was the case during the competitors meeting in Croatia in 2004 and again more recently after the last Malevsky International Cup in July 2007 where some very high scores were posted.

In order to have concrete feed back on the kind of improvements (or not) "half speed" viewing could bring to our FS judging process, we would like the IPC FS sub-committee and the Judging sub-committee to test the impact of "half speed" judging on jumps that have already been evaluated in the current judging environment.

They should, if possible, use the same working time and freeze frame as determined in the live judging situation, review the jump once at half speed. The results, together with any significant differences, should be made known to the IPC delegates in order for each NAC to have a clear position on this major item.

Of course, the goal of this experimentation is not be to invalidate the jumps used but only to allow the IPC community and the FS Sub Commitee to clearly visualize what could be the impact and benefits of such a standard of viewing.

In our judging processes history we first obviously tried to produce accurate and fair assessments. We then strived to produce the results as quickly as possible to, in a third phase, show them simultaneously to the public for the atmosphere. We have always tried to run together in a single package "how we judge" and "what we show".

However, technically it is possible to judge at half speed in the judging room and to simultaneously show the jumps at normal speed to the public. By running separately but simultaneously "how we judge" and "what we show", we could probably increase our accuracy and fairness, maintain our efficiency, and organize a better public show atmosphere.

The French Parachute Federation hopes that this request be taken into consideration either in the format proposed or any other format that the judging committee considers suitable, with the overall objective being the improvement of FS judging.

With our thanks in advance,

Gillian WINTER, IPC Delegate

Jean Marc SEURIN, NAC National Director

Jerome DAVID, IPC FS Sub Committee Advisor