posted Sep 16th, 2009 - It is not a competition, even though most of the currently best Norwegian 4-way competitors will be involved in the event. The selection of the new national 4-way team is on the agenda this month.

The selection event will not even include any skydiving. The candidates will meet with the Sports Director, IPC Delegate Trude Sviggum, former member of Norwegian national 4-way teams in the female category.

Trude Sviggum has already collected all the footage that the candidates could provide of their team jumps, and she has the feedback of the coaches who have worked with these teams. She will run tests for the candidates in different areas than the actual skydiving.

Norway applies a selection process that is based on scientific experiences in other sports and has been very successful over the years. The small Scandinavian country has continued to produce world class teams and competitors year after year.

The DeLand Norgies won three sets of bronze medals at the World Meets in 1999, 2001 and 2003. Arcteryx was not able to copy this success, even though the national team of the past years posted scores on the highest performance level in the world.

The World Meet 2008 was officially the end of the Arcteryx era. Derek Broughton, Ole Petter Hjelle, Mathias Nord and Ditta Valsdottir still competed at this year's national championship and represented Norway at the World Games 2009.

However, the team did not train and has offcially disbanded to make room for the next national lineup.

Nexus was the official national 4-way team this year and represented Norway at the FAI World Cup 2009. Ellen Cathrine Burchardt, Yngve Haugom, Marianne Nordlund and Kristine Willadsen, with Børre Christian Mørch on camera, finished in 14th place with a 14.4 average in the Czech Republic.

The Norwegian 2009 season is now at its end, and the new selection will determine who will be in Norway's national 4-way lineup for the Open Class until the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2010 in Russia. The selection process is open for all competitors who are qualified enough to make it to the event this month. Even members of former national lineups can still come back and try to become a member of the new lineup.

Trude Sviggum will have the final word after evaluating the situation very carefully and considering all the feedback that she gets from the team coaches and from other Norwegian sports experts who will be attending the selection event. The new lineup will begin with the team work soon after the decision has been made.

There are six candidates who are probably most eager to be selected for the new lineup. It is unlikely that DeLand Norgies members plan to come back, and the Arcteryx members have not really expressed their greatest interest, at least not for the moment. However, the selection doors are still open until this event is over.

The six most likely candidates have been training and competing in two different teams this year. All four Nexus members seem to be ready to move on from where they are after the World Cup 2009.

The other two candidates are Frost members Tore Granmo and Kjetil Nordin. They ran their own player coach project throughout the 2009 season, while Nexus was officially the national team.

Nexus has consisted of four players who were selected as the national team last year after the same selection process. The team has been working with Italian coach Marco Arrigo this year who provided Sports Manager Trude Sviggum with all the information that he could gather after one skydiving season with the team.

Tore Granmo and Kjetil Nordin hired player coaches for their own Frost project and attended two 4-way meets this year. They posted a 19.0 average at the World Challenge 2009 where they competed with former Arcteryx member Derek Broughton and Ivan Quadrio from Italy.

Frost also competed last weekend at the ESL Championship 2009. This time, Ditta Valsdottir joined her former Acteryx team mate as a player coach, and Frost finished with a 17.1 average after the 10-round meet in the United Kingdom.

Ditta Valsdottir and Derek Broughton will also have some feedback for Trude Sviggum, as Tore Granmo and Kjetil Nordin would like to be members of the new Norwegian national 4-way team, too.

Norway's Sports Director will obviously not only look at the scores. The Frost scores are higher than the Nexus results, but the competition draw makes as well a difference as the player coach format.

It will not be an easy decision, and it will be interesting to see what Norway will come up with this time to form the next world class lineup. The NSL News received the footage of the Nexus competition jumps at the World Cup and of Frost at the ESL Championship, thanks to CamScore. The audience can get a better picture of who might compete for Norway next year.