Competiors
Competiors
Competiors
Winners
Marco Wiederkehr (SUI)
Christian Labhart (SUI)
Alexander Diem (AUT)
Christian Ferrari (GER)
Prizes
sponsored by Larsen & Brusgaard
Timothy Mace (RSA)
Ingrid Kraus (GER)
Tim Mace 8.000 celebration!
Markus "Füge" Fuchs (SUI)
Happy Judging :-)
Competitors
Archive » 2012 Season » World Series 2012
1st ISSA World Series Event, Guenzburg (GER)
The race is on!
On the evening of Thursday the 16th of May, after a day full of final training jumps, the SpeedSkydiving WorldSeries 2012 took off with its first event of the season. Place of the action was the dropzone of the FSC Schwaben in Günzburg, located in the south of Germany. The club had already hosted a very successful WorldSeries Meet in 2011 and for that reason the ISSA Board had given a “go” once again.
Last years competition had been limited to an already impressive maximum of 30 competitors and was nevertheless completely sold out. For that reason organizer Moritz Friess (GER) further increased the capacity of this years event – with the strong support of the Series headsponsor Larsen & Brusgaard – to a new “highscore” of 40 speeders.But during registration even this number was exceeded and it looked like a qualification round would have to be jumped to make the cut. In the end it was only due to the fact that some competitors couldn´t make it to Günzburg for various reasons and on short term notice, that qualification could be skipped.
At showtime 37 competitors from 8 different countries were ready to take off to some additional altitude. Additional? By the rules the exitaltitude for valid speedrecords has to be inbetween 3962m and 4267m. Therefore most of the times speeders are dropped at the usual 4000m AGL. In Günzburg however, the organizer decided once again (like last year) to send all the loads to 4100m and the final round even to 4200m, a potential advantage for reaching even higher speeds – but only for someone who is able to make use of it. One who did was Bruno Petriconi (FRA) who pushed his personal best in the final round to an average of 422,19km/h.
Weather throughout the meet couldn´t have been any better, keeping the Chief Judge Arnold Hohenegger (AUT) and his helping hands busy most of the times. VIP on site was Mark Calland from the UK, years ago the first person ever to exceed 500km/h average during an official training jump. He flew in to provide free coaching and especially a lot of the newcomers saw some major improvements in their results during the meet due to his help. Thanks a lot Mark!
The race for the top spots was tight to say the least. For the first time ever the Germans were looking to crown their own national champion as part of the event.Even though top favorite Christian Ferrari missed his own national record only by one-hundredth of a second in round 4, it was due to 3 OBs in his first five rounds that he had to wait till the very end before finally grabbing the first place in the national ranking from leader Michael Etzel.
Same goes for Alexander Diem (AUT) in the open class who couldn´t take away the third place overall from Olli Eerola (FIN) till the last round for exact the same reason. The fastest jumper from Italy was Armando Guiseppe Bonatto Minella. He finished 9th, just ahead of the best newcomer, Timothy Mace from Southafrica, who set a new national record of 446,86km/h in his first jump.
Between the “slowest” jumper of the top 10 (among them the best intermediate Markus Fuchs SUI) and fastest jumper of the rest of the field (among them the fastest female Ingrid Kraus GER) was a difference of more than 20km/h, proving that real highspeed doesn´t come easy. At the very top of the leaderboard Christian Labhart (SUI) took the silver while Worldchampion Marco Wiederkehr (SUI) proved unstoppable by not just winning the meet but also setting a new national record with a mindblowing average of 519,74km/h, closing in very tight on Labharts Worldrecord.
At the victoryceremony happy faces could be seen everywhere and an outstanding meet came to a great end. The next meet of this years WorldSeries takes place in Locarno, Switzerland, see you there!
Podium World Series Event
1. Marco Wiederkehr (SUI), 505.90 points
2. Christian Labhart (SUI), 489.89 points
3. Alexander Diem (AUT), 469.9 points
German Champion 2012
Christian Ferrari 445.3 kmph
500 kmph Jumps during the competition
Marco Wiederkehr 4th round: 502.26 kmph
Marco Wiederkehr 6th round: 519.74 kmph
New Records
Personal Best: Marco Wiederkehr 519.74 kmph
South Africa Male: Timothy Mace 446.86 kmph
Best Newcomer
Timothy Mace (RSA) 423.03 points, 10th place
Best female Competitor
Ingrid Kraus (GER), 349.15 points
Online Results:
All results on Global Speed Skydiving Database
Actual World Series Ranking 2012
Televison
Bavarian Television
On the evening of Thursday the 16th of May, after a day full of final training jumps, the SpeedSkydiving WorldSeries 2012 took off with its first event of the season. Place of the action was the dropzone of the FSC Schwaben in Günzburg, located in the south of Germany. The club had already hosted a very successful WorldSeries Meet in 2011 and for that reason the ISSA Board had given a “go” once again.
Last years competition had been limited to an already impressive maximum of 30 competitors and was nevertheless completely sold out. For that reason organizer Moritz Friess (GER) further increased the capacity of this years event – with the strong support of the Series headsponsor Larsen & Brusgaard – to a new “highscore” of 40 speeders.But during registration even this number was exceeded and it looked like a qualification round would have to be jumped to make the cut. In the end it was only due to the fact that some competitors couldn´t make it to Günzburg for various reasons and on short term notice, that qualification could be skipped.
At showtime 37 competitors from 8 different countries were ready to take off to some additional altitude. Additional? By the rules the exitaltitude for valid speedrecords has to be inbetween 3962m and 4267m. Therefore most of the times speeders are dropped at the usual 4000m AGL. In Günzburg however, the organizer decided once again (like last year) to send all the loads to 4100m and the final round even to 4200m, a potential advantage for reaching even higher speeds – but only for someone who is able to make use of it. One who did was Bruno Petriconi (FRA) who pushed his personal best in the final round to an average of 422,19km/h.
Weather throughout the meet couldn´t have been any better, keeping the Chief Judge Arnold Hohenegger (AUT) and his helping hands busy most of the times. VIP on site was Mark Calland from the UK, years ago the first person ever to exceed 500km/h average during an official training jump. He flew in to provide free coaching and especially a lot of the newcomers saw some major improvements in their results during the meet due to his help. Thanks a lot Mark!
The race for the top spots was tight to say the least. For the first time ever the Germans were looking to crown their own national champion as part of the event.Even though top favorite Christian Ferrari missed his own national record only by one-hundredth of a second in round 4, it was due to 3 OBs in his first five rounds that he had to wait till the very end before finally grabbing the first place in the national ranking from leader Michael Etzel.
Same goes for Alexander Diem (AUT) in the open class who couldn´t take away the third place overall from Olli Eerola (FIN) till the last round for exact the same reason. The fastest jumper from Italy was Armando Guiseppe Bonatto Minella. He finished 9th, just ahead of the best newcomer, Timothy Mace from Southafrica, who set a new national record of 446,86km/h in his first jump.
Between the “slowest” jumper of the top 10 (among them the best intermediate Markus Fuchs SUI) and fastest jumper of the rest of the field (among them the fastest female Ingrid Kraus GER) was a difference of more than 20km/h, proving that real highspeed doesn´t come easy. At the very top of the leaderboard Christian Labhart (SUI) took the silver while Worldchampion Marco Wiederkehr (SUI) proved unstoppable by not just winning the meet but also setting a new national record with a mindblowing average of 519,74km/h, closing in very tight on Labharts Worldrecord.
At the victoryceremony happy faces could be seen everywhere and an outstanding meet came to a great end. The next meet of this years WorldSeries takes place in Locarno, Switzerland, see you there!
Podium World Series Event
1. Marco Wiederkehr (SUI), 505.90 points
2. Christian Labhart (SUI), 489.89 points
3. Alexander Diem (AUT), 469.9 points
German Champion 2012
Christian Ferrari 445.3 kmph
500 kmph Jumps during the competition
Marco Wiederkehr 4th round: 502.26 kmph
Marco Wiederkehr 6th round: 519.74 kmph
New Records
Personal Best: Marco Wiederkehr 519.74 kmph
South Africa Male: Timothy Mace 446.86 kmph
Best Newcomer
Timothy Mace (RSA) 423.03 points, 10th place
Best female Competitor
Ingrid Kraus (GER), 349.15 points
Online Results:
All results on Global Speed Skydiving Database
Actual World Series Ranking 2012
Televison
Bavarian Television
Scoreboard_1stISSAEvent2012_GuenzburgGER.pdf, Scoreboard