posted Jan 24th, 2011 - The NSL News has added another upcoming event to the 2011 calendar. The annual Valentine's Meet 2011 is scheduled for February 12 - 13 at Skydive Arizona in Eloy.

The Valentine's Meet used to be the main event at the beginning of each competition season and has lost momentum in the past years. The participation last year was on the lowest level in the history of the event. Only four teams traveled to Arizona in February 2010. It will be better this year, there is no doubt, and it will be an international meet with teams from Brazil and France. It will be very exciting, as well, even if the participation will not yet be like in the early years of the Valentine's Meet.

The French team is the new national 4-way lineup, Aerodyne Aerokart, who just competed for the first time at the Dubai Championship 2011. The team starts a training camp in Eloy on February 9th and plans to attend the 4-way competition at the Valentine's Meet.

The NSL News audience expected the new French lineup to win in Dubai, as the last poll results before the conclusion of the competition show. It is time now to see what the audience expects a month later in Eloy when the same French team meets the new Airspeed lineup for the first time.

The new French national coach Jeremie Rollett seems to follow the same strategy that worked well for Jerome David when he sent the new French national lineup onto the international 4-way stage in 2007. The French 2007 - 2010 lineup, reigning 4-way world champions after the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2010, began early to collect competition experiences.

Julien Degen, Jeremie Rollet, Guillaume and Mathieu Bernier competed at the Valentine's Meet 2007, the first competition for the new French national lineup by then and the first step on the road to the 4-way gold medals in 2010. Arizona Airspeed won on the team's home turf by ten points after ten rounds.

Valentine's Meet 2007		Round1	Round2	Round3	Round4	Round5	Round6	Round7	Round8	Round9	Round10	Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class	F22 K H	A17 18	10L O D	7P 8	G5 B N	JQ 3 1	619 15	149 C	2116 12	204 M	Total	Avg
1	USA Airspeed Odyssey	24	21	24	23	26	21	18	26	18	21	222	22.2
2	France Maubeuge	27	15	24	23	23	21	19	23	19	18	212	21.2
3	Perris Fury	25	19	20	20	24	19	19	22	17	18	203	20.3

The French national team of 2007 - 2010 did not go back to Eloy for the Valentine's Meet with the world champion lineup ever since. Now there is a new lineup, and national coach Jeremie Rollett tries to get new member Emmanuel "Manu" Sarrazin, Julien Degen, Mathieu and Guillaume Bernier, still with Olivier Henaff on camera, to the competitive top level as quickly as possible.

Direct competition with the top contenders is a very important part of the preparations, and the new French lineup competed in Dubai for the first time. There they met one of the top rivals for the next two years, NMP-PCH Hayabusa, and ended up in 2nd place. Arizona Airspeed competed with the leaving lineup of the past five years, and it makes only sense that the new Aerodyne Aerokart lineup wants to check out Airspeed's new lineup as soon as possible.

It will be interesting to see how the first direct confrontation between those two top contenders will turn out. Airspeed has copied the Dubai competition draw in training and knows the current situation. However, training is training and competition is competition, and the Valentine's Meet 2011 will be most exciting just for this first showdown. Hayabusa will join the mini world meet at the Shamrock Showdown 2011 and then at the World Challenge 2011 in Bedford.

Valentine's Meet 2011
Who will win the Valentine's Meet 2011?	USA Arizona Airspeed France Aerodyne Aerokart
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