posted Oct 18th, 2005 - Next Monday, October 24th, will be the first competition day at the IPC World Cup 2005 at Skydive Arizona in Eloy. The NSL News has already announced the event with a few previews. The related stories can be found at the event pages.

The IPC World Cup is a so-called "1st Category Event", which means that it has the same relevance on the IPC agenda as the IPC World Championship. The World Cup takes place every other year and allows a total of four teams per nation to compete for the IPC medals.

The different rules for the World Cup participation are the reason that there can actually be more and tighter competition at a World Cup compared to a World Championship. Next week's event is another example for this situation. The USA had six different top contenders in 4-way this year. Only one team, DeLand Fire, qualified as the US national team for next year's IPC World Championship in Germany.

The World Cup 2005 would allow four US teams to win IPC medals, and each of the three registered teams, DeLand Fire, Airspeed Odyssey and Fastrax, will most likely be in contention. In fact, there is a good chance that the 4-way event might turn out as a complete sweep for the USA.

The same rules allow Russia to send the three best teams to Arizona. Black Cat, formerly known as the Sky Panthers, Extreme.RU and Skylight-Barkli have already posted world class scores this year, while only one Russian team will travel to Germany next year.

The field of registered 4-way teams in the Open Class indicates that the three US and the three Russian teams will compete for the World Cup medals. The table below shows the scores these teams have posted at previous events of the 2005 season.

Team	SSL February	FSL March	SSL April	MESL May	MESL June	Malevsky July	MESL July	Russia August	Germany August	NSL August	USPA 2005	Best 10-round
USA DeLand Fire	-	20.7 (10)	-	-	-	21.6 (10)	-	-	21.2 (10)	-	21.0 (10)	21.6
USA Airspeed Odyssey	19.5 (6)	-	20.8 (6)	-	-	20.4 (10)	-	-	-	20.3 (6)	20.3 (10)	20.4
USA Fastrax	-	18.3 (10)	-	16.3 (6)	22.8 (6)	19.9 (10)	19.0 (6)	-	-	-	19.1 (10)	19.9
Russia Black Cat	-	-	-	-	-	19.5 (10)	-	20.8 (10)	-	-	-	20.8
Russia Extreme.RU	-	-	-	-	-	19.2 (10)	-	20.6 (10)	-	-	-	20.6
Russia Skylight-Barkli	-	-	-	-	-	18.3 (10)	-	18.5 (10)	-	-	-	18.5

The NSL News stories of this year's 4-way competitions with international participation and the impressive success story of DeLand Fire could easily lead to the assumption that the US teams seem to have the upper and stronger hand in this US-Russian race for the World Cup medals. However, a closer look at the best 10-round scores of each team shows a different picture. The Russian teams seem to be able to keep up with the US scores, and the competition in Eloy might be closer and tighter than possibly expected.

DeLand Fire has not trained much at all since winning the USPA Nationals 2005. In fact, the new US national team completed eight training jumps on one training day this week. Airspeed Odyssey focused mainly on the 4-way event between the Malevsky Cup 2005 and the USPA Nationals, then switched to 8-way mode to get ready for the French 8-way challenge at the World Cup. Only Fastrax has been in full 4-way swing without any interruptions, and team founder John Hart explained in the recent NSL News interview that his team is highly motivated and ready for the event in Eloy next week.

There is also the completely unknown French factor. National coach Jerome David explained in an NSL News update on June 12 that France will not go after 4-way medals in the 2005/2006 cycle:

"We will put all our efforts into the 8-way and the female 4-way. Parallel, we also actually work with five 4-way B-teams to get them ready for 2008. The French strategy is to either register teams that can reach for a medal or national B-teams, composed of very young skydivers, to let them get familiar with international meets. At the World Cup 2005 in Eloy, one B-team will be registered as a French 4-way Open team but will finance the meet on its own expenses. Only 8-way and 4-way Female will be national A-teams in 2005 and 2006."

One of the five French B-teams is registered for the World Cup, and it is hard to imagine that any French team of the sponsored project would not be well prepared for an appearance at a 1st Category event. However, only the first round of the competition will show what France has to offer at this point in time.

What can be expected of the competition in the area right behind the top teams? The NSL News updated the audience already as of the Norwegian and the Danish situation. The German team FSC Remscheid will most likely join the competition between these two Scandinavian teams after a very progressive 2005 season for the young team. Below are the posted 2005 scores:

Team	FSL March	FSL April	UK May	UK June	Malevsky July	UK July	Germany August	FSL October	BestMeet
Denmark DaneZ	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Germany FSC Remscheid	16.2 (10)	-	-	-	-	-	18.0 (10)	-	18.0 (10)
Norway Arcteryx	16.5 (10)	20.7 (6)	-	-	17.1 (10)	-	-	18.8 (6)	17.1 (10)
UK British Army	-	-	-	-	-	15.4 (6)	-	-	15.4 (6)
UK 4-Motion	-	-	10.3 (6)	-	-	14.4 (6)	-	-	14.4 (6)
UK South Parc	-	-	-	12.3 (6)	-	14.2 (6)	-	-	14.2 (6)

Three teams from the United Kingdom are also registered for the World Cup. 4-Motion and South Parc will probably use the opportunity to once again challenge the new national team, the British Army 4-way team. All three teams seem to be close enough to make this UK competition interesting enough.

Brazil's CTR Optimum has attended three meets of the new league in Brazil this year (14.2 - 11.2 - 11.5) and came out as the strongest AAA Class team. Lithuania is one of the former Soviet Republics and neighbors Poland on the northeastern end with access to the Baltic Sea. The 4-way team from this country enters an international competition for the first time.