posted Oct 4th, 2020 - The Austrian team Black Mantis caught the attention of the NSL News the first time in 2019 when they were challenging the reigning 4-way champions of many years, Final Fire, at the national outdoor championships.

Final Fire was still able to fend off the challenge last year. Black Mantis then followed up at the Austrian Indoor Nationals early in 2020 and won their second indoor title before getting ready for the next outdoor challenge. Final Fire have not attended any indoor meets since 2017 and came back only for outdoor competition. The NSL News has covered this year's showdown at the national championship with several updates from Austria.

The new Austrian indoor and outdoor champions are probably one of the national teams with the fewest number of jumps and the lowest 4-way competition experience in the sport. None of the active team members have yet a total number of 1000 skydives, except for team videographer Clemens Egger, who leads the team with roughly 1100 jumps from air planes.

The profile of the team and the members, and the Austrian 4-way history, was interesting enough to ask the team for an online conversation on NSL Live Talk. Four of the five team members were available last week. Only Michael Axmann was not able to join the conversation at the scheduled time.

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NSL Live Talk with Black Mantis on 29 September 2020

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The Black Mantis members have been compensating the lack of 4-way competition experiences with a strong desire to become Austrian 4-way champions as soon as the team was formed. Three of the team members (Melanie Köckenbauer, Michael Axmann, Martin Pedot) started skydiving in 2014 and formed a 4-way team quickly.

Melanie Köckenbauer connected first with videographer Clemens Egger at her home dropzone and was ready to put a 4-way team together eight months after her first jump. She left no doubt what she had in mind when she began to form her first team, as she explained during an interview in 2015. The top spot in Austrian 4-way competition was the goal.

She said that nobody took it really serious at that time. However, five years later, she and her Black Mantis team mates are the Austrian indoor and outdoor champions.

The four team members at the NSL Live Talk recalled the drama of this year's outdoor competition. They said that it was different compared to the championship event in 2019. They were in the chase from behind and not considered the top favorite for the 4-way title. This changed after the first seven rounds on the first day of this year's championship.

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Austrian Outdoor Nationals 2020		1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	AAA/4-way Open Class	10,P,F,16		15,11,B		C,J,12,N		6,K,20		Q,22,L,9		H,3,19		1,7,13		M,18,O,8		17,5,21		A,14,D,2		Total	Avg
1	Black Mantis	17		13		14	-2	14		14		13		14		-		-		-		99	14.1
2	Final Fire	14	-1	10		17		14	-1	13	-2	10	-4	13	-1	-		-		-		91	13.0

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Standings at the end of the first day

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Austrian Outdoor Nationals 2020		1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		Total	Avg
Rank	AAA/4-way Open Class	10,P,F,16		15,11,B		C,J,12,N		6,K,20		Q,22,L,9		H,3,19		1,7,13		M,18,O,8		17,5,21		A,14,D,2		Total	Avg
1	Black Mantis	17		13		14	-2	14		14		13		14		15		14		9	-3	137	13.7
2	Final Fire	14	-1	10		17		14	-1	13	-2	10	-4	13	-1	13	-1	17		12	-2	133	13.3

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Black Mantis was in the lead by eight points after Round 7. Final Fire had lost too many points (9) due to penalties and video issues. Artur Gazda said that nobody in the team got a good sleep that night. The pressure was still on a very high level, as Final Fire could easily win back three points in a round and catch up.

In fact, the defending champions won the last two rounds by three points each, and they outscored Black Mantis by four points in the three rounds of the second day. However, Black Mantis carried the victory over the finish line at the end of the 10-round thriller.

It was not the first time in Austria that two teams were fighting it out for the top spot. Amadeus and Flugsaurier pushed each other even to world-class and medal level in the mid-80's. Amadeus were slightly ahead and competed for Austria at the FAI World Meet 1987. The Austrian duel had created a team that eventually won the FAI bronze medals in Brazil, the only set of medals in Austria's Formation Skydiving history.

The next Austrian 4-way duel took place before Final Fire was merging members of the FILA team and Monkey Circus. These two Austrian teams battled for several years before they joined forces and created Final Fire. The NSL News will follow up soon with more details of the interesting Austrian 4-way history.

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FAI World Meet 1987			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open		TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	Total	Avg
1	TAG Team	FR	13	13	14	16	13	14	14	13	12	12	134	13.4
2	Golden Knights	US	13	10	11	16	12	14	14	12	13	13	128	12.8
3	Amadeus	AT	12	11	11	15	11	11	13	12	11	11	118	11.8
4	Italy	IT	11	11	12	12	11	12	13	11	11	12	116	11.6
5	Russia	RU	9	11	12	13	11	13	13	11	11	11	115	11.5
6	Australia	AU	10	13	11	11	11	11	14	11	11	11	114	11.4
7	China	CN	10	7	8	12	11	13	12	11	11	12	107	10.7
8	New Zealand	NZ	7	13	12	13	11	13	10	11	10	5	105	10.5
9	Belgium	BE	9	10	7	11	11	11	11	11	11	10	102	10.2
10	Switzerland	CH	10	11	10	9	10	10	11	10	10	9	100	10.0
11	Finland	FI	10	11	11	11	9	11	13	10	5	8	99	9.9
12	Netherlands	NL	10	11	9	9	9	11	11	9	9	9	97	9.7
13	Denmark	DK	6	10	9	10	9	11	10	10	9	9	93	9.3
14	Great Britain	UK	6	9	8	10	9	10	11	8	10	10	91	9.1
15	Sweden	SE	9	11	5	10	10	9	10	8	9	7	88	8.8
16	Canada	CA	7	9	9	9	7	10	7	8	8	8	82	8.2
17	Colibri	DE	5	8	8	8	9	9	9	7	6	8	77	7.7
18	Spain	ES	7	7	7	7	6	8	7	6	7	7	69	6.9
19	Brazil	BR	7	6	3	7	7	8	9	3	7	3	60	6.0
20	Norway	NO	2	7	7	3	3	8	9	6	6	7	58	5.8
21	Ireland	IE	5	5	4	4	4	4	4	3	1	4	38	3.8
22	Chile	CL	3	4	3	2	3	2	4	3	3	3	30	3.0
23	Venezuela	VE	1	3	5	2	3	0	5	2	3	4	28	2.8
24	Maroc	MA	4	5	6	1	1	5	0	0	1	2	25	2.5
25	Argentina	AR	0	1	2	1	1	2	2	2	1	0	12	1.2

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