Indonesia fails in four-way first jump

By Primastuti Handayani

LIDO, West Java (JP): Taking on the more experienced and better prepared foreign teams, Indonesia failed to display a formation at the four-way sequential event at the Sixth World Parachuting Championships on Canopy Formation yesterday.

"We're nervous, it's a non-technical problem," Dadang Kadarusman, a member of the team, said.

Indonesia, which was represented by the Aves Club from Bandung, West Java, only had one month in the United States to train for the competition.

"We had trouble in changing from diamond, the basic formation, into vichy formation up there. Unfortunately, the judges did not count the point for the basic formation," Dadang explained.

"Other participants, especially from Europe and the United States, had a better technique to display formations but we are not capable of using it," he added.

Dadang said that during the overseas stint the team was only able to display five formations. "We were never be able to form more than five. I hope we can do better in the next jumps."

The four-way sequential event provides three minutes for each participant to display a maximum of 14 formations.

Yesterday, France displayed 10 formations in its first jump, followed by the United States for second place by displaying nine formations.

Defending champion the United States failed to better its own world record, which was created in 1994 in Australia by displaying 16 formations.

Canada and Switzerland shared the third position by displaying seven formations and South Africa only produced two formations.

The canopy formation championships features three events; four-way canopy rotation, in which five jumps have been completed, four-way sequential, in which only one round of jumps has taken place, and eight-way speed formation, in which three rounds of jumps were completed on Monday.

The delayed competition, which was scheduled to resume yesterday and is being contested by six countries, again had to be postponed owing to the hazy weather.

"The weather is too hazy and we're not able to see the parachutes on the monitor," chief judge Brenda Reid told The Jakarta Post.

After midday, when the conditions appeared clear enough to resume the event, the organizers were forced to abort the competition as the wind speed was too strong, exceeding 20 knots.

Despite such cancellations, however, chairman of the organizing committee Vice Marshall Purnomo Sidhi told the Post that the championships will be finished as scheduled.

"All events will be continued until all participants have a chance to finish eight jumps," Purnomo said.

"If the weather is perfect, I think we can finish the championships in only three days," he added.