posted Jul 20th, 2006 - The registration for the World Meet 2006 is complete, and the field of participating teams has slightly changed since the last update on May 30. The national team from Kazakhstan has joined the 4-way competition in the Open Class. The 4-way team from the former Soviet republic already competed at the Malevsky Cup 2005 and now visits Germany for the world meet.

The additional registered team strengthens the upswing that the chart of participation in the 4-way Open Class event at world meets already indicated before Kazakhstan was added to the line-up of teams.

The participation in the female category of the 4-way event grew in the meantime, as well. The last time that signed up for the event is not new to 4-way competition. In fact, Alfa-Fox from Ukraine has already caught the attention of the audience several times in the past.

The team had its first appearance at the Malevsky Cup 2004 and stood mostly out due to the bright orange color of the jump suits and the courage to compete on a very low scoring level. The live audience on site in Russia cheered for the attractive Alfa-Fox members whenever their jumps were shown on DZ-TV. The Ukrainian team finished with a 2.9 meet average.

Alfa-Fox traveled to Croatia a few months later and competed at the World Meet 2004. The same line-up still ended up in last place of the 10-team field. However, Alfa-Fox had more than doubled the total points and finished with a 5.4 average after nine rounds in Croatia, even though the bright orange jump suits were still the main eye catcher in Croatia.

The Ukrainian team continued with the same colors in 2005, but the performance level was different. The 7.0 average at the Malevsky Cup 2005 showed that the team was committed to move up on the leaderboard. It was still a last place in July 2005 in Russia. However, Alfa-Fox was already closer to the female teams ahead of them in the 7-team field.

Then came the World Cup 2005 in Arizona and brought the well deserved and huge success for Ukraine's 4-way team. The jump suits were still orange, but the meet average had gone up to 10.1 after all ten rounds in Eloy. It was the first time that Alfa-Fox left another team behind, and the Spanish national team in the female category was the first victim of the persistent Ukrainian team.

Unfortunately, an accident at the very end of the World Cup 2005 injured one of the team members seriously, and the progression of the team career was interrupted for a while. However, Alfa-Fox is obviously back in action after signing up for the World Meet 2006. It will be interesting to see how far the team has come since the success at the World Cup 2005.

The field of 12 teams in the female category is a new record participation and brings the total number of teams at this year's world meet to 46. This number in the overall chart clearly shows that the general participation enjoys a quite consistent upswing, as well.

Only the 8-way event does not show much progression. Austria withdrew the country's FILA Circus line-up from the competition in Germany, which brought down the total number of teams to nine. However, the 8-way competition is surely alive, maintains the average participation of the past years and will be very exciting once again.