1998 World Cup of FS, Freestyle & Skysurf

"Stylin' & Surfin' 1998"

Freestyle & Skysurf News and Commentary by Tamara Koyn

(Tamara is serving on the judging panel for Freestyle & Skysurf)

Friday, 24 September

The morning blue skies were beckening for the jumping to begin. Rounds 6 and 7 (accept for a few jumps) were completed in partly cloudy scores and judges completed scoring all jumps.

Wegrath of Switzerland is dominating the women's skysurfing by 90 points over Garcia of the USA. In their routine, carefully choreographed with sync rolls and orbiting motions with her camera flyer, Heggli, Wegreth and Heggli are performing a vertical orbiting team move in which Wegrath flies over Heggli into a Galleon position and then flies under Heggli into a standup. Other skysurfing teams including Fradet/Raymond, Klaus/Schmid, Furrer/Krecker and others in the men's division are also performing this vertically orbiting maneuver. Garcia and O'Brien perform a unique horizontal orbiting maneuver during which Garcia orbits around O'Brien while reclined in a sit position on the board. In a pulsating rhythm, she pauses, makes a 360 sit spin and resumes the orbit about O'Brien. (In these team maneuvers, either the performer, the camera flyer or both perform the relative flying to accomplish this team maneuver.)

In men's skysurfing, Fradet/Raymond pulled ahead of Furrer/Krecker for first place with consistantly higher scoring free round routines. Fradet attacks skysurfing moves with blinding speed and precision while Furrer has a more graceful touch. Fradet starts one of his routines with a Galleon exit and then carves around Raymond and then spins in a Helicopter. Fradet finishes with such a fast spinning Invisible Man that his red, white and blue jumpsuit creates a strobe effect of colors. In their routine, camera flyer, Krecker, while flying below holds and circles Furrer's hand to start him into his Helicopter. Later in the routine, Furrer performs a sit spin with Krecker spinning in sync above him. As the ground appears to spin below Furrer, Furrer seems to actually place the nose of his surfboard pointing to each corner of the TV set in turn!

Most competitors are performing more than one free round routine throughout competition.

Saturday, 25 September

The day has started with dreary cloudy and rainy skies with competitors on standby.

Please stay tuned to "Stylin' & Surfin' 1998" for more details! A complete article about the freestyle and skysurfing at the competition will be posted at http://www.koyn.com/CloudDancer  by the end of October, 1998.

FREESTYLE & SKYSURF CURRENT STANDINGS