Boel's 3D Bits

By Boel Janérus (Freefly Competitor, Sweden)

Wednesday, June 27

Judges bow to the Danes
Alright, so Stefania Martinengo is not the only one who has got a 9.4 score anymore. In the male freestyle competition Danish performer Nils Predstrup and camera flyer Martin Kristensen did it too - and three times in a row, on top of that!
People here are amazed by their free routine. It's very fluent with a lot of carves and includes a headspin where Nils keeps his legs straight and together. (Knowing that headspinners usually form a "v" with their legs for stability it makes you wonder how he keeps from falling). Then he stops the spin in the blink of an eye, performs a Thomas Flair and after that nails yet another perfect, straight headspin.

The Danish team's total score is 37,2 right now. Behind them is Olav Zipser and Mike Swanson with a total of 35.6 and even if the Danes are in a strong position for the moment, anything can happen during the coming rounds.

Tight between female freestylers
Stefania Martinengo is still in the lead in the female freestyle event, but the judges lowered the score from 9.4 to 9.3 in her second and third round while Emanuelle Célicout gets a steady 9.0 for each of her free routines. Right now only 0.2 points separates them. The final rounds will be exciting, for sure, and it will be interesting to see what tactics the two ladies use - if they play it safe and keep performing the same routines or if they dare to change anything.

Tanya O'Brien unthreatened
The female skysurf competition, on the other hand, is far from thrilling. Tanya Garcia-O'Brien and her camera flyer Craig O'Brien from the US really kick all the others' butts. Their total score after four rounds is 34.8 while Germany's Judith Graile and cameraman Christian Gottinger is far behind them at 25.0. The only thing that could threaten Tanya's position at this World meet is a huge mistake on her own part.

Rozov and Fradet share the lead
As a contrast the male skysurfers are experiencing an extremely tight top fight. After the first four rounds France's Eric Fradet and Valeri Rozov share the lead and everyone's tense and eager to see what will happen during round number five.
Fradet is the favorite of many, since he is one of the world's top skydivers all in all having received several FS gold medals and other fine awards over the years. But Rozov is the reigning champion. He won over Fradet with one point at the World meet in Australia two years ago. Yes, Fradet did win the World cup in Arizona last November, but then Rozov wasn't even there.

Freefly Circus moves to the top
The French Babylon team had the lead over the two US freefly teams for the first three rounds, but in the fourth round something happened. Babylon's camera flyer Stephane Fardel had a dark expression in his face after the fourth jump and their score was only 6.9 as compared to their earlier 8.7 points for each free routine. That means Freefly Circus is at the top right now, but Arizona Freefly has gained tempo and is only 0.3 points behind them. It will definitely take some effort for the French guys to regain their loss, but there are still several rounds before the first World meet in the freefly event is completed.

What we know is that Babylon won over Freefly Circus at the World cup last year. Just before the cup the Circus's John Matthews was badly injured in a canopy incident so the team took in Steve Utter as camera flyer while Olav Zipser and Mike Swanson did the performing. That gave them a second place. After a couple of months Olav Zipser and Mike Swanson took Max Cohn from the Ranch into their team and started training together. That constellation didn't work out, however, so Max moved back to the Ranch and was replaced by Rook Nelson from Skydive Chicago. Rook Nelson is something of a freefly prodigy. He is not much older than 20 years but has already beat Zipser in the AD Challenge at one of the most recent Space Games. So for the next freefly rounds, let us see what the master and the prodigy can do, and how Arizona and Babylon manages in their efforts to push them out of place.