posted Apr 25th, 2012 - The NSL News introduced the French national 4way team in Vertical Formation Skydiving, Team4speed, with the story on 21 February 2012. The French world champions of 2010 had competed at the Paraclete XP Indoor Championships 2012 and provided the NSL News with enough information for a team story of the meet experience.

It was time to follow up with a more personal introduction of the team members when Team4speed visited in DeLand for a spring training camp. The French VFS experts had scheduled their visit around the Paraclete XP Outdoor Championship 2012 that was taking place at the same time. They would have liked to join the competition, which did not include VFS 4way. This may change for the 2013 event.

Team4speed won the indoor competition in Raeford without their coach being present. This time, French national VFS 4way coach Philippe "Professor" Schorno was in DeLand to work with his world champions of 2010. Team4speed has to defend the French gold medals this year in Dubai..

Paraclete Indoor 2012		Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5	Round 6	Round 7	Round 8	Total	Avg
Rank	VFS 4way	C,20,13	B,18,O,8	K,A,16,Q	H,F,J,4	2,11,10	M,E,21,22	P,L,3,12	14,6,D	Total	Avg
1	Team4speed XP	30	34	36	34	34	29	26	35	258	32.3
2	SDC Standard XP	32	31	33	31	30	29	23	31	240	30.0
3	Arizona Arsenal	27	27	28	24	26	25	16	29	202	25.3
4	Bottrop Bulls	21	27	29	26	23	21	20	26	193	24.1
5	Paraclete XP	18	21	24	19	23	19	16	24	164	20.5
6	STF Block Party XP	19	21	21	17	19	20	15	20	152	19.0
7	BoopAri	14	16	10	14	15	13	9	12	103	12.9

Philippe Schorno knows how to do that. He won gold medals in the traditional 4way competition in 1987 and defended them three times successfully before retiring from competition and switching to his coaching career. The Team4speed members said that he has become a legend in France due to his achievements and experiences.

Philippe Schorno also eventually switched from traditional 4way to Freeflying and then VFS 4way competition since he believes that this discipline represents the future of Formation Skydiving competition. The Team4speed members said that indoor training has made it much easier to learn and master the comprehensive and challenging flying skills that it requires to compete in this event.

The team members are all full time skydivers and windtunnel instructors. They all agreed that the most important part of VFS 4way competition is the same as it is in traditional 4way, despite the more challenging and more comprehensive 3-dimensional skills: "First of all, you have to find good team mates. The rest follows by itself."

Everybody can learn the technical skills with good coaching in the flying chamber, even though coach Philippe Schorno (jokingly) said that the NSL News reporter will never be able to master them. It took Team4speed five years to get to the top level and win the first gold medals in this event.

The team videographer is even more a team member in VFS 4way than he is in traditional 4way. Julien Guiho explained that Yannick Poletti cannot just sit still on top of the formation to capture all scoring formations and maneuvers. He has to move around a lot under the formation to find the right angles.

The competition in VFS 4way has mostly been a duel between France and USA so far. However, Philippe Schorno explained that this has been the same for a long time in traditional 4way and 8way where only Russia has made it a 3-nation battle once in a while and over a longer period of time. This year, it was still only be the same battle between Team4speed and SDC Standard XP. The French team won the first part at the Paraclete XP Indoor Championship 2012.