EC's & WC's in FS, AE, CF, SP, Saarlouis, Germany. Day 6

Congratulations to our new FAI Formation Skydiving Judges!

Saturday 12th August 2017

17.00hrs:   Prizegiving

Congratulations to our new European Champions and World Cup winners:  follow the links for the different discipline Medal Tables, FS, AE, CF, SP.

Helmut Bastuck took to the stage to start the proceedings for the Medal awarding ceremony, expressing his disappointment in not being able to complete all scheduled rounds. He went on to suggest that the blame fell at the feet of Patrik Lauer, County Commisioner of Saarlouis, who had promised fine weather at the Opening Ceremony!  Helmut invited Patrik to address the audience, where after apologising profusely for his failed promise, he received a rapturous applause when he said he'd donate 50 litres of beer by way of compensation!

Patrik Lauer apologising for the bad weather!

Preparations are now underway for the Prizegiving at 17.00 hrs with the Gala Dinner scheduled for 19.30hrs. In the meantime the rain failed to dampen the spirits of the competitors as they celebrated with the winners and fellow jumpers.

14.45hrs:   Try as they might the Organisers were beaten into submission, as with no sign of any improvement in the weather before the deadline time for the final wheels off at 15.00 hrs, Dr. Rainer 'Exi' Hoenle, our Meet Director announced that the Competition was over.   The FS Competitors meeting will take place at 15.15 hrs.

Karla Cole facilitating the Competitors meeting	Judges and Competitors

15.15 hrs:  FS Competitors Meeting:  Karla Cole introduced herself as a member of the FS Committee who had been asked by the Chair, Mark Szulmayer who could not be present at this competition, to chair the meeting.  She called for comments from the floor regarding the conduct of this meeting, other than the weather which was not under anyones control.  The first comment from a competitior was a request to be compensated for the rounds they had not jumped.  Karla said this was not something she could answer but she would speak to the Organiser;  Alberto Martin Paracuellos (FAI Controller) did ask that competitors bear in mind that the organiser had expenses to cover haveing budgeted and planned for a completed competition  The second point raised was the missing upto date information at the Hotels on the first day although this had neen rectified by this being posted thereafter on the Organisers Website.  Some competitors asked to be given a greater lead time for information on release due the time it took to get from the hotels to the DZ.  

The new rule for deciding a Tie Breaker after failng to make a Jump for the decision, needed to be clarified more clearly.  Karla said she would take all these points to the committee for consideration prior to the next Plenary Meeting.  Being a World Championship event next year no major changes to rules will be made. 

There was considerable discussion about the publication of the scores immediately, particularly in the case of part rounds for 4-way being jumped to leave those also involved in 8-way clear for a quick call.  Some competitors felt that when teams were in close competition it gave an advantage of one over the other to know what had been scored.  There was no common concesus regarding this as the majority of competitors present seemed content to leave it as it was.  Again there was discussion, led by the Americans regarding being asked to jump in cloudy conditions on safety grounds, although most European teams are used to these conditions.  The rules give the right to a team to come down with the aircraft if they chose not to jump for a 'pertinent reason'.  There is pressure also on the Organiser to complete the competition safely. 

Turing to VFS the competittors stated that this was the best judged competition they had ever attended and felt the small changes in the rules had benefited by jumpers and judges.  They asked the committee to look at the new block 20 as the direction of turn of the subgroups could lead to an accident.  Karla said she would definately take this back to the ommittee and suggested that the team who raised the question come up with an alternative Block and send it directly  tothe committee to consider.  

The final proposal from the Judges is to make it mandatory for each team camera flyer to have 2 cameras.  It had proved beneficial during this competition when presented with a jump going into a 'not visible due to meteo conditions' the second camera carried by that team had presented a judgeable image.  The team would be able to chose which camera they presented for downloading.  This would be looked at by the Committee and if approved would be introduced for next year.  There was some discussion as to whether this should be mandatory or the team's choice.  In which case it was also discussed that a team with only one camera would not get a rejump due to 'NV'.  This was not unanimously supported by those competitors present.

There were no further points raised so the last competiotors meeting of the 2017 European Championships in FS.AE, CF and SP ended and everyone left to prepare for the prize-giving ceremony.

14.00hrs:   At the competitors' meeting for Speed Skydivers Chair of the Speed Skydiving Committee, Elisabet Mikaelsson addressed the competitors, firstly by acknowledging her committee members namely: Moritz Friess, Arnold Hohenegger, Alyia Ananina, Mike Lovemore, Kate Charters and Holger Enderlin.

Chair of Speed Skydiving Commitee: Elisabet Mikaelsson

Speed Competitors

She went on to say they she and her committee were fully aware of the various discussions that have emanated throughout the competition week concerning the position of the measuring devices. She assured the audience that her committee will work to clarify the rules by next year’s Plenary in Bulgaria, adding that any changes will be notified by1st March 2018.

Looking to the future she reiterated that the current devices are now obsolete and new models are being evaluated. The new units will be slightly larger in size and won’t fit in a cradle, but will be placed inside a dedicated pocket. Mike Lovemore is assisting in the development of such a pocket, and it is this item that will be sealed, instead of the device itself. Hand in hand with the testing of the new device will be updated software. A question from the floor was whether the software would be Mac compatible. Arnold replied that as the majority of people use Microsoft based laptops etc, they will continue development along those lines, adding that he is a Mac user himself and hasn’t experienced any issues regarding cross platform use. J

James Parker, one of the UK competitors, extended thanks to the Speed judges and other officials for what has clearly been a difficult week. His comments were met with applause from the floor. In closing Elisabet added that at least 3 new National records have been set during the competition.

Have since confirmed with the Chief Judge of Speed Skydiving, Angelika Mittasch, that new National Speed Records have been set by:

14.00   The Artistic Events Competitors Meeing took place at the same time as the Speed Skydiving.

Committee Members and Judges	Some compettors

The Artistic Events competitors meeting was well attended and a lively discussion took place as Ron explained how the changes made in the rules for this year to help define difficulty had worked.  The judges had spent a full day going through the videos teams had provided along with their drama sheets.  They had certainly appreciated teams taking time to talk through and explain what they were trying to achieve.   This speeded up the judging of round 1 over previous compettions.

The addition of an ex-competitor, but very current jumper, to the panel had been of benefit to them all and she hoped those who come to the end of their competitive careers will consider taking up judging.  Dominille Kiger-Hill (Domi) then added her view to this, explaining that she was making the change to judging from competing, but asked if this would be acceptable as she obviously still had personal links with some of the competitors and was worried that this would be seen as a conflict of interest.  She wanted to be reassured that she would not be ‘knifed in the back’ by other competitors.  The competitors preesent said they were more worried about poor judging and would prefer her on the panel. 

The competitors asked for more explanation of the judging rules and Ron spoke about changing the points split from 3 to 4 categories;  Difficulty, Execution, Camera, Presentation; at the moment if there was a fault in the camera work it was difficult to know were to put it - either in execution or presentation so they felt it would be simpler to have another box for Camera.  They were also working on a new set of guidelines which would bring things up to date, knowing that these were constantly being developed by competitors.

There was a lot of discussion about making changes to the compulsory moves in relation to degrees of rotation, and no concesus was reached.  The committee would look at this and any other proposed changes and these would be posted on the AE Facebook page.

The competitors asked if it would be possible to post the difficulty score of their ‘pre-competition video’.  Again there was a lot of discussion and the committee will look at the possibility of meeting this request.

It was encouraging for the discipline to see so much positive interaction between competitors and judges.

13.45   All 4-Way competitors except for teams 424, 427 and 428 (4-Way open) are released.  At 14.00 hrs we also have a competitors meeting in Artistic Events.

In the lunch tent one of the British Delegation was surprised by his comrades with a birthday cake.  Happy Birthday Richard Cotton from the 8-Way team Project: Ride the Dragon.

12.56hrs:  The competitors' meeting for Speed Skydiving will take place at 14.00hrs.

11.30hrs:  The Canopy Formation competitors' meeting is currently underway, whilst everyone else remains on another weather hold. The conditions over the past couple of days have been challenging for the Organisers and occasionally dispiriting for the competitors. However, optimism rules!

CF Committee: Rina Gallo (Chair) Peti, Tash, Julia	Competitors

Rina started the meeting by congratulating France on their new World Record, she then moved to the IPC Web Challenge which was launched on the IPC Web site at the beginning of July, but so far only three teams have registered.  Peti then spoke of the lack of interest in the 8-Way event as it was difficult for any team of 8 to form.  He launched the idea of a 6 way speed event instead and talked about the proposal from Exi to introduce a new IPC Event of 6-way Speed, to use a lower exit altitude and be judgeable from the ground for instant judging - thus meeting the FAI requirements for a World Games parachuting event, that can be understood, observed and giving immediate results for the public to enjoy.  Obviously the Web Challenge would still require a video flyer to present the evidence to the judges.  There was some discussion from the French team about the dangers presented by 8-Way speed on the exit with everyone opening their parachutes on exit ending up with canopy collisions which is why the event stopped.  The committee said they would take this into consideration when the worked on the rules for 6-Way.

Julia then made an impassioned speech to try and generate more interest, as she feared that IPC would take a decision to end CF as a discipline entirely.  The problems encountered with this European Championships (and World Cup) in having to cancel both 4-Way events, and only 7 teams in 2-Way showed terminal decline.  At least the Web Challenge presented an opportunity to all CF jumpers around the world.  She asked all present to work in their communities to encourage take up.  At the moment only three teams had registered, and so far no dives had been submitted for judging.  (Australia, Finland and France). 

Julia then moved on the the current competition which appeared to be at an end after 5 rounds, but it had been a close and exciting competition both to watch and to judge.  She added her congratulations to France for the World Record, but also announced a South American Continental Record by Argentina and a new National Record for Poland.  There was general applause.

Rina then called for  questions and suggestions from the floor and the Russians raised the old question about Grip definition, but France argued the current rules were clear and had not slowed them down at all.  The discussion closed without support for the Russian position, and the meeting ended amidst the noise of the rain on the tent roof.

10.05hrs:  All calls are cancelled. It's likely to be an on-going stop-start day as the cloud base fluctuates, as well as the occasional sprinkling of rain.

09.15hrs:  Congratulations to all the new FS Judges having successfully completed their training course this week, ably run by Karla Cole (R), Chief of FS Judge Training.

09.00hrs:  In spite of another forecast of bad weather, they have managed to get the first load of 4-Way in the air! 

The following table, updated as of Saturday 10.45hrs, shows how many rounds have been completed in each event, as well as the number of Judged jumps in the next round.

.