13th World FAI Canopy Formation Parachuting Championships 2008
Airport Teuge, The Netherlands 8-14 September
By André le Roux D270

 

Traditionally CF has had 4-Way Rotations, 4-Way Sequential and 8-Way Speed as events. 8-Way Speed has been dropped due to the small number of teams competing, but a new event has sparked a great deal of interest around the world: that of 2-way Sequential.

Graham Field and I (Mike Rumble on camera) tried this out on a scratch basis at last year’s Nationals and it looked like a lot of fun, but we were a 4-way Rotation team and didn’t pursue the idea.

This year’s Nationals was different. Gerrit Lambert & I (with Charles Barnhoorn on camera) again put in a scratch 2-way team competing against the other two from our 4-Way Rotation team. Now those jumps were a revelation. Again, a lot of fun, but a lot more difficult and complex than it looks.

Something to think about for the future, but not yet seriously.

Then I got the phone call: Tim Mace had an approach from the new Internet TV channel: www.airsports.tv (the Breitling Airsports World channel) and suggested we enter 2-Way Sequential at the World Meet.

That was 6 weeks ago.

The plan was that Tim, Gerrit Lambert and I each take a turn at camera while the other 2 do the formations. That started off an internal competition: 3 “teams” within a team. Tim & I, Tim & Gerrit, Gerrit and I. We would each do 2 competition jumps and the winning pair takes rounds 7 and 8.

An intriguing idea, we were in!

A weekend at Rustenburg was fruitful, but with very limited training time, we opted for Wonderboom and double the working time for every jump. (This worked well until that nasty cold front blew us a few suburbs away, but that’s another story…)

We duly arrived in Holland with some more serious weather to greet us and only managed to jump 3 days later. The accompanying picture illustrates the mood of the SA camp as posted on the local website.

2 practice jumps late on the last day before the Meet cheered things up somewhat, despite high winds and thick clouds.

Perfect weather marked the start of the competition and it’s even better today as we face our 8th and last round.

Standards have been excellent among the top teams with surprise performances from Egypt, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Coaching and funding has gone a long way with those teams.

Watching the footage of the Russian 2-Way team (who broke the world record: 18 points in a 60 second working time) shows how it should be done. It has no relation to 4-way Sequential in that it’s much faster and almost has the rhythm of 4-way Rotation. A very special event in its own right.

There’s a lot of crossover overseas. Michael Vaughan, who won the last CP Meet in Europe, competed in the Australian 2-Way team. There were a number of FS World Team members competing in CF over there.

19 teams there for 2-Way Sequential, 9 teams for 4-Way Rotations, 6 teams for 4-Way Sequential. A pretty big Meet.

While we’re a bit disappointed with the scores, we’ve met our goals in terms of picking up the event techniques from the best.

We also brought back the footage for our Judges’ Committee. We certainly had enough busts to help illustrate what to look for and how the international judges interpret what’s allowed and what not.

I believe 2-Way Sequential is the future of CF in SA. It has a massive following worldwide and is by far the most popular CF event.

It’s easy to get into and infinitely easier than putting a 4-Way team together. It’s challenging, very dynamic and, above all, fun.

   

The CF SSA committee is arranging two more CF skills camps: one in October this year and one in February next year. February’s one will incorporate 2-Way Sequential. Come and have a go, you’ll enjoy it!

Our thanks to Blueye for some amazing eyewear and to Airsports.tv