posted May 6th, 2017 - Russia's national 8-way team Tanay did not wait too long after the FAI Mondial 2016 to make new plans for the 2017 season.

The bronze medal at Skydive Chicago was encouraging for the new 8-way team with the President of the Russian Skydiving Federation in the lineup, Andrey Barabash. Barkli, with sponsor Leonid Kazinets as a team member, had won two sets of bronze medals (2010, 2012) and silver medals in 2014 for Russia before Leonid Kazinets stepped back and Andrey Barabash started building a new 8-way team.

The 8-way bronze medal last year was the first one at an FAI World Meet for Andrey Barabash, while his team mates were some of the most experienced 4-way and 8-way competitors in Russia and had won many FAI medals at previous world meets.

The Tanay 8-way team recently completed a spring training camp in DeLand, which brought the number of training jumps since the Mondial to approx. 320.

FAI Mondial 2016			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	8-way		12,A,16	18,15,O	1,F,E,C	17,B,14	10,2,20	21,11,G	J,5,19	L,M,K,7	D,8,4	3,13,Q	Total	Avg
1	Golden Knights	US	31	25	26	22	20	22	19	26	24	24	239	23.9
2	France	FR	22	20	25	18	16	19	17	23	19	20	199	19.9
3	Tanay	RU	23	19	25	17	14	16	16	21	20	19	190	19.0
4	Qatar Falcons	QA	19	16	20	15	7	10	13	16	15	15	146	14.6
5	Microclim8	UK	15	14	16	14	11	13	13	14	13	17	140	14.0
6	Airbus	DE	16	15	17	11	11	13	12	14	12	15	136	13.6
7	Australia	AU	13	13	14	12	9	13	12	15	10	14	125	12.5
8	Divergence	CA	11	10	9	11	8	10	8	10	11	11	99	9.9
9	Brazil	BR	11	8	10	9	5	9	9	11	8	13	93	9.3

The 19.0 average at the Mondial was one of the highest Russian 8-way results in history. Only the lineups of 1999 (20.9 - 2nd) and 2003 (20.2 - 1st) ever broke the 20-average benchmark. Vasily Korotkov was the only Tanay member last year who was in the 1999 lineup, while Dmitry Samokhval had joined him for the gold medals in 2003.

The two 8-way world champions in the Tanay lineup have good company now, as one of their 1999 and 2003 team mates joined Tanay this year.

Vladimir Pavlenko is one of the most experienced and successful Russian 4-way and 8-way competitors in history. He was in both lineups that posted the 20+ averages (1999/2003), and he also won the first 8-way gold medal for Russia in 2001.

He was in the Barkli lineup of 2010, 2012 and 2014 but did not continue with Tanay. Now he took the open slot when Vladimir Arutunov stepped back.

Russian 8-way medals at each FAI World Meet since 1985, with two exceptions in 1985 (4th) and 2008 (no team)

Vladimir Pavlenko has FAI 4-way medals in his collection, as well. The Sky Panthers Barkli (Leonid Kazinets, Vladimir Pavlenko, Oleg Shalamykhin, Sergey Shenin, Andrey Seliverstov on camera) missed FAI 4-way bronze medals by one point in Germany 2006 and by three points in France 2008 before finally finishing 3rd with the same Barkli lineup in Russia 2010.

He continued with Barkli in 4-way and 8-way in 2012 and 2014 before the break and then took the alternate slot for Tanay at the Mondial 2016.

Andrey Barabash, Valentin Ilin, Vasily Korotkov, Dmitry Samokhval, Evgeny Stashchenko, Alexander Tychinskiy and Sergey Yalpaev were in the Tanay lineup of 2016. Only videographer Vadim Niyazov is not coming back. He is the new Vice President of the Russian Skydiving Federation and has to cover for his President Andrey Barabash when he is in training.

Kirill Kirillov is the Tanay videographer this year, who was also filming the team at the Russian Nationals 2016. He will most likely provide the video footage of a new Russian 20+ average, maybe even a new record number...

Scoring averages of Russian 8-way teams at FAI World Meets since 1985