From: dbriggs@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Daniel Briggs)
Subject: Freestyle Championships
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 05:47:36 GMT

In article <92313.184628U50281@uicvm.uic.edu>
  <U50281@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>Has anybody heard the results of the freestyle championships?

I just got back from Eloy today, and it was quite a weekend.  I didn't
compete, but I drove down to watch, and gawk, and hang out with people of
similar mindset.  There is some amazing stuff being done!

Overall, the competition level has gone way up from 1991, as '91 went up
from '90.  The best have gotten better, and the level at the low end has
moved up too.  There were 24 teams preregistered for the event, 10 in the
women's division, and 14 in the men's.  22 showed up to compete, and 20
(19?) actually finished the competition.  There were some accidents, though
it looks like everyone will be OK eventually.  More on that later.  I'm
afraid that I can only report the major results from memory and the
precompetition media guide, as I neglected to get a paper copy of the final
score break down.

Women's 4th place
  Chifumi Sakakibara (Japan) and Redy Redfern (England)
Chifumi is featured in the centerspread of this month's Parachutist, and
was a very strong contender.  She was 2nd after the initial compulsories
round, but dropped down to 4th after the free round.

Women's 3rd place
  Rosalyn Tomkins (Australia)   and   Gary Cunningham (Australia)
I've got to admit that I don't recall anything extra special about either
of the previous two performances.  There was so much spectacular stuff
going on that the merely very good kind of got lost.  One of the women
used a bungee cord prop during the last half of the free round.  (It
connected her wrists and ankles, and arched in the wind quite nicely as
she did front and back layouts and kickbacks.)  I don't *think* it was
Rosalyn, but I'm not sure.

Women's 2nd place
There was no second place this year, as there was an exact tie for first
place.  The organizers hadn't anticipated the possibility, and had to
give one medal to each team (instead of to each person), with the
promise that they'd get more made ASAP!

Women's 1st place (tie)
  Tamara Koyn (USA)   and   Jamie Paul (USA)
Women's 1st place (tie)
  Dale Stuart (USA)   and   Ray Cottingham  (USA)

This was the usual rivalry.  Tamara has been doing freestyle since before
it had a name, and was very instrumental in bringing it to where it is
today.  It came as quite a surprise to many people when Dale Stuart
appeared at the first freestyle meet and beat her decisively in 1990.
Tamara trained aggressively for the '91 meet, and narrowed the point gap
considerably, but lost again by a single point out of 300.  With the
possible exception of Deanna Kent (who has never competed, though she
judged the previous (two?) meets), Dale & Tamara were clearly the strongest
female competitors in the freestyle world.  So it was clear that there was
going to be another head to head competition this year.  Both teams have
the advantage of superb camera flyers, so the freestylists are showcased
to their best advantage.  In particular, I thought that Stuart/Cottingham
had the best cinematography of the competition.  Tamara's strong point has
always been raw creativity.  Last year, she was the first person to
introduce the use of props to the competition, with streamers attached to
the wrists during part of the final round.  One of the judges was even
quoted as saying that "Dale's moves were much cleaner than Tamara's, but
her use of the streamers pushed her creativity score way up".  Well, no one
can say that this year.  She used no props, and clearly had put a lot of
work into precision and control, as her moves were as clean as they come.
In fact, she smoked Dale in the compulsories by a full 5 points out of 100!
(I don't know exactly why Dale scored as low as she did in the
compulsories.  She seemed to put in a fine performance, but was
consistently outscored by Tamara by nearly a point per move.)  The free
round was worth twice the compulsories, and Dale rallied to outscore Tamara
by about 2.5 points, resulting in the final tie.  (At the high end of the
scale, points are hard to come by, so 92.5 as opposed to 90.0 out of 100 is
a considerable difference.)  Tamara's straddle stand up was amazingly wide,
betraying her origins as a dancer, which she turned into a really amusing
move.  Imagine a full straddle split, with the legs nearly horizontal.
Then she bent them at the knees, so that the calfs were vertical and toes
pointed.  She rotated this position about the axis through her spine.  It's
the damndest looking thing I've ever seen.  Clearly nowhere else but in
freefall can this be done.  Dale Stuart's performance looked much like the
one she used last year, including a slight variation of her "reclining on
air" pose.  She's very good at twisting moves, and her exit with the
twisting back layouts into a vertical T was as amazing as ever.  (I don't
mean to give the impression that the routine was exactly the same, but the
fact is that without comparing the '91 & 92 videos one after the other, I'd
be hard pressed to describe exactly how there are different.  Or how they
are the same.  Her routine is complicated enough that even now, 30 hours
after seeing it half a dozen times, I'm having some difficulty recalling
exactly what she did.  But as usual, it was spectacular. :)  Dale Stuart got
the award for best freestylist.  (As opposed to best freestyle team.)

Men's 4th place
  Scott Smith (USA)   and   Richard Stuart (Australia)
These two were the techno-geeks of the competition.  (Which, as a techno-geek
myself, I mean in the nicest possible way.)  Scott is really quite good,
and I think his 4th place finish must come as a bit of a disappointment
after his 2nd place last year.  Their final round featured a device that they
called the SDT (Spiral Death Trap).  As it turned out, the name wasn't
entirely inappropriate, as Scott had no less than 2 successive totals in
the competition, while experimenting with unusual gadgets.  The final jump
of the free round worked perfectly, but it took 4 tries to do it.  Unless you
ask me directly, I won't spoil their surprise, since you'll be able to see
it yourself on ESPN.

Incidentally, this seems like a good time to mention the broadcast
schedule.

SkyBlazin' 92, on ESPN
Sunday Jan 24, 1993  1:30 - 2:00 PM EST
Wednesday Jan 27, 1993  1:00 - 1:30 PM EST

While it's nice that the sport is getting a fair bit of media coverage, not
to mention cash, the flip side of this is that ESPN has exclusive rights
to the video until after it's been broadcast.  So don't expect to see the
competition video up for sale until February or so.  :(

Men's 3rd place
  Olaf Zipser (Germany) and Mike Vale (USA)
Olaf is, well, ... Olaf.  You might recall him from last year's competition
as the dude with the hair, the funny expressions, and the predilection for
standing on his head.  Well, none of that has changed.  In fact, he started
his free round with a toe hang from the floater bar of the otter, and spent
a considerable amount of time standing on his head.  (This is not easy, for
those of you that haven't tried it.)  He's gotten better at it, too.  Last
year, I think he really got dinged for control, as his headstand stuff was
a little wild.  (He placed 4th.)  This year it's much cleaner, he does more
flying while in the headstand, and his transitions from headstand to
standup and back are just amazing.  His layouts are the fastest that I've
ever seen.  Have you seen Mike Michigan in _From Wings Came Flight_?  You
know the scene where he's in the white jumpsuit and it looks like the video
has been speeded up?  Well, I'm pretty sure that Olaf is faster than that,
and he does a lot of them.  It brought gasps from the audience.  Inspired
by Olaf, I tried to see just how fast I could crank a layout series.
Pushing that hard, I couldn't hold them together as long as usual, but I
got going fast enough to get a pretty good acceleration tingle in my head.
I'm sure that I must have had about half the angular velocity that he did.
Mike Vale's video work was I think the most aggressively acrobatic of the
competition, and for most of this round the poor viewer has little idea of
which way is up.  (I'm pretty sure it was Mike Vale who got the award for
best camera flyer.  In any event, it was a damned impressive performance
for a camera flyer with only 300 jumps!  Ray Cottingham might have gotten
my vote, but his work wasn't nearly as flashy.)  It's a shame that this
team came in third, but that just speaks to the level of the competition
this year.

Men's 2nd place
  Kazuhiko Kokubu (Japan) and Akio Kawabata (Japan)
Once again, the wind tunnel set turns in a strong showing.  This team had
less than 300 jumps between them, but over 100 and 80 hours of tunnel
flight time respectively.  Kokobu's signature move was a lovely one foot
spinning stand up.  Imagine the crane move, right out of the Karate Kid
movies.  Arms up and spread, standing on one foot, with the other foot
raised and bent at the knee.  Now spin this position on the vertical axis.
Real fast.  I don't think he spun this as fast as Olaf's layouts, but it
was close.  And he finishes the move by punching the other foot down into a
standard T and stopping the spin within a single rotation.  It's a very,
very pretty move.  I think I'm going to see about tackling it myself,
though it looks pretty hard.

Men's 1st place
  Marco Manna (Italy) and Bruno Brokken (Italy) This may have been the
surprise of the competition.  Marco was seeded well in the middle of the
pack by the preliminary video submissions, with a score in the low 60s out
of 100.  He upped that to 91 in the compulsories, and followed it with
something like 92 in the free round, for the best average score in the
meet.  (After the compulsory round was posted, everyone was asking "Who is
this Italian guy?  No one had ever heard of him, and he absolutely dusted
everyone else by a substantial margin.)  While the 2nd and 3rd men's
division teams seemed to emphasize high speed aggressive moves, Marco's
stuff seemed mostly characterized by grace and control.  He had a move
where he started in an inverted T, (T position, with one leg vertical and
back to earth), took it to a vertical T, with one leg down and one
horizontal, and then forward into a standard T.  It was *slow* and
perfectly controlled.  I still don't know how he was driving the thing,
since it didn't look like he was moving at all.  You got the impression
that it was just sheer power of thought.  I was kind of amused to note that
he included Mike Michigan's trademark series into his routine, though it's
not as if the stuff is copywrited.  It's the one with a pinwheel into a T
into a daffy.  Anyway, Marco got the award, richly deserved, for
outstanding new talent.  And the really amazing thing is that only has
about 500 jumps, of which less than 200 are freestyle.  He really seems
like a person to watch, since he must have incredible native talent.


About the accidents, there were several.  On Friday, the Nationals were
still using the normal landing area for the accuracy competition, so the
freestyle competitors had to land in a parking lot.  Apparently there were
no wind sock or streamers, and one competitor complained about having to
do a down wind landing in order to avoid a car driving through the landing
area!  I didn't arrive til Saturday, so I didn't see it first hand, but it
sure didn't sound like a good scene.  During one round when the wind was
fairly low, everyone was pretty much landing in random directions.  Joel
Wade did a fairly radical hook turn, and collided with Jamie Paul who had
just touched down.  Apparently Joel went through Jamie's canopy and lines
from the front and pendulumed into the ground extremely hard.  Jamie was
picked from the ground and slammed back in, though nowhere near as hard
as Joel.  Joel was knocked unconscious, and hospitalized from Friday through
Sunday.  His partner, cameraman Charlie Mullins, says that he'll be OK.
I don't know exactly what his injuries are.  I also don't know if Jamie
was hospitalized or not, but he finished the competition to the admiration
of his fellows.  He was walking pretty stiffly, but took home a 1st place
medal so obviously it didn't slow him down *too* much.  A Japanese cameraman
busted a leg, also before I arrived.  I don't know if it was Akio Kawabata
or not.  If so, I'm not clear who was filming Kokobu.  A Japanese woman from
the same party sprained an ankle in a landing accident as well.  I'm not
sure if she was a competitor or a fun jumper travelling with her friends.
For some reason, there was a ring of hay bales around the peas, at a
distance of about 10 meters.  It looked like she might have had to make a
last moment correction to avoid a bale, which might have contributed to the
sprain.  Whether by chance or not, all of the people who had accidents were
tunnel riders, with comparatively few jumps.  There was a little speculation
that perhaps their canopy skills were not up to the same level as their
freefall skills.  On the other hand, most of them had more jumps than me,
and shit can happen to anyone.  People didn't seem real sympathetic to Joel,
though, as he took out someone else besides himself.

Another accident related to the competition happened to the celebrity
announcer, Don Swayze.  He also got nailed by a hook turn, several days
before the competition.  (As with most things, there were some mitigating
factors.)  The script for the show called for him to start the commentary
from the otter, and then jump.  Well, with his foot in a fresh cast, that was
pretty much out of the question, though he thought about it.  They eventually
ended up faking a landing, and sewing a cover over the cast for the scene
in the airplane.  We'll see how well it comes across in the ESPN coverage.

Finally, did people know that Norm Kent broke his back during the 200 way?
Apparently he had to land too close to a building due to traffic congestion,
and dirty air collapsed half of his canopy somewhere between 50 to 100
feet or so.  He was supposed to be at the competition as part of the ESPN
staff, and was sorely missed.  If anyone has continuing work on his status
and recovery, please post it!


As to overall impressions of the competition as it relates to the sport, my
feelings are kind of mixed.  Freestyle is definitely starting to take off,
there is no doubt of that.  But there are some rifts starting to develop,
too.  Freestyle folk have gotten pretty used to being thought a tad weird
and antisocial around the DZ.  After all, who wants to jump by themself, if
they don't have to?  But as the sport is starting to take off, and the
freestyle community has gotten stronger, the same rifts are there.  The FS
community is just stronger, but maybe not any more accepted than before.
(Forgive me a few gross overgeneralizations here.  I'm not speaking to the
vast majority of jumpers, but more to a vocal minority who really do have
an axe to grind with FS.)  There was one old CRW dog around the campfire
Saturday who was really sounding off on a lot of things that were wrong
with modern skydiving, freestyle being one of them.  "Me and my friends
work hard at what we do, and we don't see any ink.  Those wimps get up
there and do a little of this shit, [waves arms in air, in a parody of a
T], and they get all the ink.  It ain't fair!"  And the freestyle folk do
seem to have a reputation for being snooty and arrogant.  Instead of being
not good enough to jump with the boys, now it's that they are "too good" to
jump with them?  We loose either way.  :( And I'm not sure that the problem
is just with the perceptions, either.  Some freestylists do indeed have the
attitude of the "artiste'".  And there is no small amount of self back
patting about being the "cutting edge" of skydiving, as well as the most
"saleable".  (Do we really want to be sold?)  There's also the historical
fact that some top executives at USPA have had a real dislike for
freestyle.  (Think about it.  Beyond the last two issues, and the recent
power change at USPA, when was the last time you saw freestyle get *any*
coverage in _Parachutist_?  Rumor has it that there was actually a mandate
prohibiting such coverage, beyond paid advertisements.  We may not be BASE
jumping, but we're not real skydiving, either.)  It seems that there may be
some reconciliation between the WFF (World Freestyle Federation) and USPA,
so maybe things will get better there.  But some of the comments made during
the competition did sound suspiciously like "If they won't let us play in
their sandbox, we'll go make our own sandbox over here.  And it'll be a
bigger sandbox, and we'll laugh at them when they want to come play with
us."  And then there's the fact that freestyle is becoming less free.
There were plenty of jokes about the "compulsory freestyle" round.  It's
great that the incentive of competition is driving people to new heights,
but already it seems that we're going to see "free freestyle" and
"competitive freestyle".  Namely, that which fits in the competition format
and that which doesn't.  To the competition's credit, *almost* anything
does fit in the free round of the competition, and I do hope that we don't
loose that.

Did people know that the WFF is trying very hard to make freestyle a
professional TV sport?  It sounds a little ludicrous at this point, but it
might not be as silly as it sounds.  Don't hold your breath, but ESPN seems
to think that it's got something, and some major sponsors have expressed
interest, if not serious cash.  The Bud Lite World Freestyle Classic?
(Sorry, the Bud Lite World SkyBlazin' Classic.)  It may happen.  Whether
this is a good thing or not, I just don't know.  It'd be wonderful to see
what could be done with the incentive of real cash prizes and a
professional tour, but we might end up selling our souls in the process.
Already, the top few teams have gotten a little commercial for my taste,
and it's just going to get worse, if the current trends continue.


For the last few tidbits, I'll point out that not everyone has lost their
sense of fun.  "Bullet" Bob Craigin and Kelly Wolf put together a really
neat entry.  I doubt that you'll see him in the ESPN coverage, unless they
show him for sheer novelty value.  Maybe you'll see him in Parachutist or
Skydiving.  He had big fur gorilla arms (the death fur!), and bright red
big fuzzy feet.  The feet were about 12 inches long (yes, a foot!), maybe 8
inches wide, and flat on the bottom -- mini skyboards!  He did most of his
free routine in a standup, and it was clearly pretty difficult to keep up
on the things.  But the capper was when he quite literally "walked" off
stage past the camera.  Michael Jackson, match *that* moonwalk!

And finally, there was one move that I really wanted to give "honorable
mention".  I would dearly love to credit the originator of the move, but I
never learned her name, and she finished somewhere low in the standings.
By process of elimination, it has to be one of Marcie Carter, Amy Baylie,
or Tammy Clark.  My guess is the first, but I dunno.  Anyway, she called
the move a "Maverick".  Real simple, but quite pleasing -- I can't wait to
go out and try it myself.  It's a pinwheel (some call it a sidespin), with
bent limbs.  Instead of looking like a starfish while you're spinning, your
limbs are bent into the position of a swastika.  Start in a pinwheel, and
tuck up.  The conservation of angular momentum kicks up the rotation rate,
and the outer limbs being bent defines the limits of rotation in a really
striking way.  I'm told that it takes a fair bit of strength to keep the
limbs being thrown back out again by the rotation, but I don't know that
first hand yet.


Ah well, it was an interesting weekend, and I've got a lot of things to
think about.

Blue skies, all.

-- 
| Daniel Briggs  (dbriggs@nrao.edu)                      |  USPA B-14993
| New Mexico Tech / National Radio Astronomy Observatory |      DoD #387
| P.O. Box O / Socorro, NM 87801   (505) 835-7391        | 
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