Saturday 27 October

0700
I did not attend the 10-way awards last night (I assume they were held) as T1 took Amy and I out for a fabulous French dinner at "The Citrus Cafe," but I'm interested to find out if anything transpired. I'm interested because a rare thing happened in competition yesterday: The best team didn't win. I think Skydive Chicago STL 10 was clearly better than Arizona Airspeed, but that 40.00 on round one did them in. Were they robbed? Who knows. First, I think Roger should have run a practice jump by the judges before the competition. Second, all the rules (and rules interpretations) should have been clarified at the competitors' briefing the night before (that's why they have competitors' briefings). More reporting on this later.

Meanwhile, our final event of Sport Accuracy begins this morning, and we'll be bringing you the action here today to close out these events.

Congratulations to STL TFx, winners of this year's God Frog Award, presented to the 10-way team that best represents the spirit of competition. TFx has gone through a lot in the last three weeks - losing one team member due to personal reasons and tragically losing two members on a practice jump when their canopies collided. The team continued on at the request of one team member who was engaged to one of the friends they lost in that accident. They stuck together through really tough times, and they truly deserve the God Frog Award, presented to them last night by John DeSantis on behalf of last year's winner, Perris Extreme 10. Congratulations again STL TFx!

1000
Sport Accuracy scores coming soon, along with some photos from last night and today...

Airspeed 10 does a hilarious team face-plant after their final jump yesterday.
Sport Accuracy: Initial contact as close to disk as possible. Come to standing stop within outer circle. It looks like a lot of fun, and the crowd is really into it.

Allrighty then, I have some Sport Accuracy scores posted...

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1600
It's done! Mike Ortiz really put on a show in the Sport Accuracy contest (Ultra category). His round 8 jump was good for 14 cents, and he *JUST* managed to squeal to a stop before going out of the circle. Great job Mike!

The 2001 U.S. Nationals are now complete, except for tonight's banquet. It was a smashing wonderful nationals (except for maybe some of that 10-way SNAFU) and Skydive Arizona demonstrated once again why it is the premiere venue for large skydiving competitions. Great staff, great facilities, lots of fast airplanes, and most important of all, you can bank on that sun coming up in the morning and going down at night with little to no cloud interference. Roger Nelson will be hosting the 2002 Nationals at his Skydive Chicago, and he has done at least one important thing: He's got OmniSkore! We'll be there!

That's all for today, I will probably have some loose ends wrapped up tomorrow and maybe some photos from tonight's banquet. Ciao!

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