Empuriabrava 2002

This year the World Cup and European Championships will be held at this small town Empuriabrava which is a well known holiday paradise at the Costa Brava on the North East coast of Spain.

Next year the World Parachuting Championships will be held in September 2003 in Gap France. The goal of CF Team Teuge is to get a medal at this global event.

The Wagner brothers (as always at least one of them here on site) are running their omniskore system including the website with results. Therefore I will only post our scores. The others can be found on their site. The fastest and most complete overview:

On site impressions. The team has visited Empuriabrava several times in the past for their training camps. Most times we stayed in apartment group Maurice Park. The whole Dutch delegation will stay here, which is very good because it's only a 5 minute walk to the dropzone.

After our arrival in rainy Barcelona we had to change the cars that were waiting for us. Nine skydivers with luggage won't fit in 2 cars. Luckily the car rental had a Picasso and a C5 station wagon so fit us all. The next morning we could start training straight away. We were still registered in the system and had some jump tickets left from our last training camp. A good day to start with. Ten jumps in several compositions. We tried to find the best team set-up but didn't find it. Therefore we decided to jump with the new and future team. Jan, now our reserve, was pleased that he could travel around the surroundings and could show Frank Boon, our team manager, the Costa Brava and it's interesting sites.

Friday the wind started strong. Stayed strong but at lunch time it went over the limit. A long lunch break and time to visit the site of the other competitors. After a few hours the wind came down so we could continue training. Eight jumps that day. Saturday no wind but the day of the opening ceremony. During the speeches everybody was on the ceremony site. Including us. Another seven jumps and we ended the day with a 16 point jump. Sunday we made another seven jumps due to a wind break.

Official training day and opening of the competition. Before we did the official training jumps for Rotation and Sequential we were able to make 4 "unofficial" jumps. The team for Rotation consists of John, Ronald, Roel and Henny. For Sequential Jan takes Ronald's place.

The opening ceremony for the artistic events and Canopy Formation didn't take as long as the previous ceremony. Straight after the competition started. At the end of the day we had 2 Rotation (both 14 points) and 2 Sequential (both 5 points) jumps. For Rotation these scores were pretty disappointing because on both jumps the first formation was way too late so we missed 2 to 3 points. The Sequential jumps were, although not very smooth and constant, not too bad. Actually a full point above our average.

We woke up with big thunder. A lot of rain which didn't change during the day. A day to work on the social contacts. A lot of talking with several different countries about future projects and developments in the sport.

Like yesterday the day started with rain, rain and .....The air looked dark. Apparently the French already had been at the DZ and came back with a Standby call until 11.00 AM. But, suddenly the weather changed and the clouds started to break. At 10 it was blue sly above the DZ. Now we had to wait for 11. The organization started sharp at 11 so we could make 1 round before the clouds closed as fast as they opened before. The jump wasn't very successful. Again 14 rotations in time. The judges had another opinion and busted 2 of the rotations so our score came down to only 10 points. The Swedes, our main competitor, also had a bad jump. The wrapped somewhere in the middle of the jump and didn't came further than 8 rotations.

Also the artistic events made one round. The rest of the day it rained cats and dogs. The team spend the time to talk about the coming world meet in Gap France. We all still have the same goal. Now we have to make a schedule and see how the financial part will work out. To make the planned and needed amount of training jumps we need some additional funding above the monthly spending all team members already sacrifice.

In the past the team has invested a lot in equipment, clothing, suits, helmets, radios, etc. And of course many jumps. Due to the deal with Tommy Hilfiger the team has 8 competition canopies. For the coming season, from now until the next world meet in September 2003, the team mainly needs jumps. MANY jumps. From the planned team account about 175 to 225 team jumps can be done, missing 100 to 200 jumps to reach our goal.

It looks like the Tramontana (wind from the mountains) finally won. Besides the clouds we've a very strong wind from the North. Although the clouds started to break during the day the wind is way to strong to jump. Locals say that this wind will stay at least a few days. We'll see.

Another boring day for us. Not a single jump. The whole night the wind was blowing but at 8 o'clock the wind came down just within the limit of 24 knots. The competition continued for the artistic events but CF didn't get a call. After the first load the meet director decided to start CF 8 way speed. This round was just completed before the tramontana burst trough. Within 10 minutes the wind went from 20 knots to at least 40 to 50. Luckily the load before had just landed and the plane in the air could be called down. Back on standby. Every hour this standby call was extended. Waiting and waiting for the wind to come down. But it didn't so no more jumping for the day.

Because we're equal with the Swedes we both want to make another round so it will be clear which one of us has to buy the beers. The Swedes have 15, 13 and 8. We have 14, 14 and 10 (busted from 14). The worst round will be thrown away so we both have 28 points. But...they have the highest round with 15 so if we don't make another jump they will win. We both agree that it doesn't give a fair feeling so we want to clear this in the next jump.

Amazing the next morning. Blue skies and no wind. The organization decided to finish the round for 8 way and the 3rd round for rotation. If time available one more round for rotation. In that case we would have a change to fight with the Swedes. Officially the competition would end at noon so we had to get in the air around eleven. And that's what happened. All teams made the 4th round. We had a clear 15 but didn't know the result of the Swedes. They had 15 too!. We had to wait for the judges to know if they would score us that way. And they did. Both 15 means that we had a shared 3rd place but the rules are clear. First the highest round but we both had a 15. Than the fastest highest score. The judges had to clock the 15 point jumps again.

No more round for sequential also means that we had a bronze medal for this discipline. It would be terrific to have a bronze medal for the two 4-way disciplines. In the mean time we had to make an exhibition jump on the beach. The big screen was already there and the beach was changed into a big party place with many airblades and flags. We made a nice show for the crowed and landed spectacular with our Hilfiger canopies. The whole jump was shown on the big screen.

After landing the Swedish guys came to congratulate us because our score was 0,2 sec faster than theirs so we also had the bronze medal for rotation. An exceptional happy ending of the competition for us.

CU @ the next event.
Henny