Today is official practice. The official draw is tonight, and we begin 4-way tomorrow morning. Ken and Lucy are busy reconfiguring the container we emptied last night as a room for the (FS) chief judge and a second scoring system. If we have good weather and the judging keeps up with the pace (more on that later), the second scoring system will sit there unused. Otherwise, the Artistic Events judges will co-occupy it with the FS chief for a day or two.

The judging plan remains a Big If to me. Pia, the chief judge, told the organizer that only one panel of judges would be required for FS. Which is perfectly true as long the judges are efficient and disciplined and there aren't too many teams. How many is "too many" is of course proportional to the efficiency of the judges, but in this case, we're talking about 30 teams, and some people associated with the organization want to do semi-live judging, with the team being judged standing on the platform and a DJ/MC type interviewing them while the judges chew on the results. To me that's fine, it works great (as we saw in Japan last year), if there aren't too many teams; we'll be here all day and all night doing just the first round or two if they try to judge everyone this way. I submitted this to the powers that be, and the response was "We'll just do some of the teams this way then." But I don't see how you can do that. One team of judges mixing semi-live judging with bring-me-a-tape-judging is going to get confused ("What are we doing next?! Semi-live or Memorex? Who's in charge?"). Who's going to decide which teams get judged semi-live, and who's going to gin up the response when an non-chosen team makes noise about it? Been there, done that! I hope they give this more thought. Part-way into round 1 is not the time to discover you had the wrong plan...

Oh yeah, for those of you not familiar with it already: "Semi-live" judging is a recent (last couple of years) compromise in the now-expired effort to do live judging for FS. True live judging requires special video transmission equipment and lots and lots of work and planning and money from the organizer and it's well very challenging to do properly. Semi-live judging consists of the judges doing their first judging view when the videographer dubs his footage to the DV master, minutes after landing from a competition jump. This means of course that the judges must have communication with the dubbing station ("403 round 2 coming up!"), and the videographer has to stand there and wait until the judges are ready before he can roll tape. If the judges get behind, you end up with a long line of frustrated videographers at the dubbing station and a restless crowd in front of the big screen.

1100
The judges are now judging official training jumps... nobody familiar on the screen yet ... there's the Spanish 8-way team ... wish there was a way I could see into the judging room, they like to leave the scoring processor in "scoring standby" (with a team and round number queued, like they're about to score) and then go on a coffee, tea or lunch break, while we're waiting in breathless anticipation of the tape to roll ...

 

Ivan Coufal, host and competitor for Spain... ...and Alberto Martin,organizer extraordaire.

1300
The final pieces to the organization puzzle are falling into place. Currently there are 7 Female and 25 Open class teams. Will the judges be able to keep up with 32 teams? If the teams jump 5 rounds in a day, that's a cool 160 scores to log. If they manage to stick to 2 and a half minute turnarounds with no breaks, that's a solid but doable 7 hours of judging. If they go 3 or 4 minutes as some judges are wont to do, it will be a long, long day ...

1530
Well a few e-mails are trickling in ... and we already have people asking about team names and team photos. Patience, webhoppers! We only started taking team pictures today, and it will take another day minimum to get them all sorted, cropped, renamed, and posted to the web site. We will not have team numbers (or even the proper list of team names) until the competition draw tonight. Look for team names tonight or first thing tomorrow morning, and the photos will follow during the day.

For team and delegation members here: yes, you can get a full-resolution copy of your team photo, simply bring us a floppy disk or e-mail address to the truck where the photo was taken. Please try to wait until after 6 October, however, since Saturday and Sunday will be a little hectic.

Italy Sinapsi PD is doing their practice jump ... zirc/zirc, hook, adder, meeker ... a 23, very nice! Jumping has ceased, we're on a weather hold, high winds ... looks like the tramontana, a very local weather condition caused by low pressure to the east and high pressure to the west, causing a rapid air flow from north to south across the Pyrenees Mountains (hence the name tra, across, montana, little hilly thingies). The southern end of the mountains is just a few kilometers away, so like some places in Southern California, the winds can be very high in one place and non-existent a few kilometers away.

Here are a few "official practice jumps" results. Please note that (1) they did different jumps and I have no clue who did what, (2) I'm assuming that the judges had the correct team queued when they created the score, and (3) the names and spelling are as the chief judge entered them in OmniSkore:

4-way Open:

Italy S.S. Lazio 1: 12
Sweden Phenix: 26
Turkey: 4
Finland FC Moukku: 15
Spain Red Bull: 22
Italy Sinapsi PD: 23
Switzerland Endeavour: 16
Norway Deland Norgies: 24
Germany EADS: 18 (they busted a zircon)
Russia Sky Panthers: 22

4-Way Female:

France: 12
Spain Las Chicas: 9
Italy Kewara: 15
Norway TNT: 17

I still haven't gotten a straight answer on whether it's "4-Way Female" or "4-Way Women" or what. Anyone got a clue?

1815
Some jumping has continued by I haven't seen any practice jumps being judged...

2030

... and we have a competition draw!!! The nice version will be posted soon, but until then, here's the draw, same for women's, open, and 8-way:

1. 6 13 14

2. G C 7 5

3. 21 P 20

4. D 3 4

5. K A E H 8

6. 11 9 12

7. 19 O 1

8. 22 L B 18

9. 16 Q 2

10. N J 10 F

11. M 15 17

And with that we're off to dinner. I'm not sure what's going on in the morning, but it won't be jumping. The opening ceremony is at 1200 and round 1 starts at 1330. By then we will have the team names and numbers up and possibly a few photos.

See you then!

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