posted Oct 22nd, 2006 - The end of the registration process on Saturday did not bring any surprises. The teams signed up for the competition classes, as it was mostly expected, especially in the AAA/Advanced Class and in the AA/Intermediate Class.

There are several interesting aspects though. The team names for the AAA/Open Class competition include Black Cat. Yes, it is the Russian 4-way team that did not make it to the World Meet 2006 in Germany this year. Sky Panthers Barkli had won the Russian Nationals 2006 and represented Russia in Germany.

Black Cat competed right after the World Meet 2006 at the Malevsky Cup 2006 and finished the 10-round meet with a 24.0 meet average, the highest result in the history of Formation Skydiving history. Black Cat also scored a new official world record for a single round at the same event, together with Extreme.RU. The videos of both 44-pointers can still be viewed on NSL-TV/RealXstream.

Black Cat now owns the official world record for a single round and the inofficial 10-round average record. However, the team did not even compete at the World Meet 2006 and did not have the opportunity to show that it is currently the best team in the world. Black Cat was eager to make that point and began with travel plans for the USPA Nationals 2006.

The Russian team, with Vasily Korotkov, Alexander Kvochur, Alexey Minaev, Vadim Niyazov and Evegeny Stashenko in the line-up, already beat the silver medalist of the World Meet 2006, France Gap Nice Icarius Autrement, at the Malevsky Cup 2006 by 11 points after the ten rounds.

Now it is time for Black Cat to take on all the US top teams in Eloy. However, even if the Russian team beats the five US top contenders at the USPA Nationals 2006, there will still never be evidence whether Black Cat would have been ahead of the 2006 world champions, DeLand Fire, or not. The team has disbanded and will not compete again.

This still does not make a big difference for the purpose of Black Cat's trip to Eloy. The AAA/Open Class competition at the USPA Nationals 2006 will just be as challenging as it was for Sky Panthers Barkli at the World Meet 2006. Airspeed's 4-way line-ups of Odyssey and Velocity are expected to perform just as strong as DeLand Fire at the World Meet 2006.

In fact, Black Cat has an open account with Airspeed Odyssey. Both teams competed against each other at the same location a year ago. It was the FAI World Cup 2005 (Archives > 2005 > Leagues > Special Events) where Odyssey outscored (22.2 - 21.2) the same Russian team by ten points. Black Cat eneded up in third place after a jum-off with DeLand Fire for the silver medals.

It will be much more difficult for Odyssey to repeat this victory at the moment. Black Cat is very well trained, while Airspeed focused on 8-way throughout the 2006 season. It will be very interesting to see how much opposition the Russian team will be facing from the five best US teams.

Team Fastrax has been looking at the Russian team from the other side of the leaderboard so far. The best trained 4-way team of the US top contenders competed at the World Cup 2005, as well, and ended up far behind Black Cat and below the 20.0 average mark.

The new Fastrax line-up of the 2006 season changed this situation already at the Malevsky Cup 2006. The 21.2 average in Stupino was a big step compared to the 2005 results. However, the distance to Black Cat (24.0 - 21.2) was still significant. Fastrax will be eager to get as close as possible to the Russian team this week.

Stay tuned, the next update will follow very soon.