France breaks own record in eight-way formation
By Primastuti Handayani
LIDO, West Java (JP): It took just two days for the French parachute team to break its world eight-way speed formation record at the World Parachuting Championships on Canopy Formation here yesterday.
The French skydivers took 27.39 seconds in their fifth jump to link into a kite formation, seven hundredths of a second faster than the record they set on Tuesday. Each team of eight parachutists has two minutes in each jump to display a formation.
"Everybody did his job. Everybody worked well and did not work too fast because in such event we have to go nice and smoothly," Christopher Balisky, a French team member, told The Jakarta Post.
Balisky said he was confident his squad would sharpen their own record. It was the third time within four days France set record breaking time.
"We can do better but probably by only one second on the kite formation," he said. "We've done better in training."
The organizers of the biennial parachuting meet finally completed the required five jumps in the four-way canopy rotation, four-way sequential and eight-way speed formation events.
Military officers
The French team is comprised of military officers and civilians. They prepared for two years for the championships
The United States trailed second after taking 33.09 seconds to get into the kite formation. Australia came third, taking 43.36 seconds.
It took the Indonesian team 109.82 seconds to get into formation. The competition was delayed for five hours due to strong winds and haze.6
In the four-way rotation event, Italy scored 21 points to beat defending champion France by one point in yesterday's sixth jump.
France, which set a new four-way rotation record on Sunday by scoring 22 points, maintained a narrow cumulative lead with 121 points to Italy's 120 points. There are two jumps remaining.
Russia and Canada each scored 18 points yesterday, with Russia staying in contention for the title after collecting 107 points.
The 1,000-strong crowd continued to support the Canadians. The Canucks, wearing yellow and purple jumpsuits to match their parachutes, stole spectators' hearts with their fantastic maneuvers following their rotations.
Indonesia, which is represented by members of the Army's Special Force, was only able to manage 10 rotations in the event.
The four-way canopy rotation is expected to be completed today.
New Zealand withdrew from the championships on Tuesday after a member of its team was injured, reducing the number of participating countries to 12. (yan)