posted May 7th, 2009 - The last updates from Germany covered one of the new national challengers, Final Four, with the story on 22 February 2009, and recently the new lineup of the Chicas.

The situation is different in Germany this year. There has not been a very strong competition for the top spot in 2007 and 2008. In fact, Germany has always had one team that dominated the national 4-way competition for a certain time period: Colibri in the early and mid 80s, Mobel Krugel in the late 80s and early 90s, Dadalus for the rest of the 90s until EADS took over in 2000.

The original EADS lineup (Olaf Biedermann, Jens Goennemann, Goran Meyer, Thomas Spielvogel, with Marc "Euro" Ewert on camera) retired officially after the World Meet 2006 in Germany and competed only in 8-way from then on. Markus Bastuck, Dieter Schwarz, Jörn Thiele, Max Thiele, with Alexander Hau on camera, have dominated 4-way competition in Germany ever since, under different team names, such as Next Generation, FSC Remscheid and recently FSC Eisenach.

EADS and FSC Eisenach butted their heads in 4-way for a little while, as other teams challenged the German top teams here and there in the past. However, they finally took the undisputed top spot only after EADS had retired. FSC Eisenach has now been the German top team since 2006 and joins forces with EADS in 8-way.

A new challenger came up when X-Ray Remscheid recruited a new lineup in 2008. X-Ray was too far behind EADS and FSC Eisenach to play a serious role in the pursuit of the national top spot (15.7 - 18.9 in 2007).

However, X-Ray got much closer (17.7 - 18.3 in 2008) after more training with the new lineup (Uli Sehrbrock, Mike Vetter, Steffen Schiedeck, Peter Grossmann), which made the German 4-way competition once again more interesting and like a 2-team affair.

The situation for the 2009 season is new and unique for German 4-way competition. It seems as if there will be even three teams battling it out for the 2009 4-way championship title. FSC Eisenach and X-Ray Remscheid are back with the same lineups for the 2009 season, and the original EADS lineup will also have a casual comeback.

There is a very good chance that these three teams will all perform on the same scoring level. FSC Eisenach has been able to maintain the 18+ level without much training and will most likely do the same in 2009. EADS has not trained 4-way at all in the past two years. However, three of the members have been training and competing in 8-way and are up-to-date with their skills.

The 4th member, Jens Goennemann, has moved to Australia, as the NSL News story on 23 March 2009 and did not continue with the EADS 8-way project. However, he won the Australian 4-way championship with Rotor Out this year and is obviously in good shape, as well.

The EADS 4-way lineup is currently training in Eloy, Arizona, and the former German 4-way champions will not need much time to find back to the same 18+ level where the other two top contenders will perform. Actually, X-Ray Remscheid has not posted an 18+ average so far (17.2 - 17.7 in 2008). There is still no doubt that the highly motivated team will break this benchmark very soon.

In fact, X-Ray is the best trained team of the three German top contenders this year. Uli Sehrbrock, Mike Vetter, Steffen Schiedeck and Peter Grossmann have worked hard in 2008 and 2009 to cut the distance to the top position in Germany. They succeeded already last year when they gave FSC Eisenach a very hard time at the DFV Cup 2008.

X-Ray Remscheid continued with more indoor and outdoor training, guided by coach Gary Smith, in the winter and spring. The team has not attended any competitions so far, as the German top teams have not been the busiest competitors at all over the years, with the exception of the Chicas.

The Remscheid team will not slow down until the national championship in July and complete more training jumps and tunnel hours than the other two top contenders, FSC Eisenach and EADS. The training agenda and progression in 2008 and 2009 may even set up X-Ray Remscheid in the very unusual spot as the new top contender for this year's gold medals.

It could be the opposite situation for FSC Eisenach and EADS. Both teams may consider themselves almost as the underdogs. However, all three teams consist of the most experiended competitors in Germany who are used to pressure. EADS member Thomas "Spieli" Spielvogel even holds the international record of attendance at world meets, together with Airspeed's Craig Girard.

There are still some real German underdogs this year, Final Four and Chicas. Both teams performed in 2008 at about the same level where X-Ray Remscheid was two years ago. Final Four is moving forward and upward with big steps, and the Chicas situation has changed with new member Nina Kuebler.

None of the German teams has attended any meets this year so far, and real competition practice is generally still not very high on the German team agenda. It will be interesting to see how each of these teams will handle the mounting pressure, as time goes by. No matter what happens in the meantime, the German Nationals 2009 will most likely become the most exciting competition in the German history of 4-way competition.