General
There was a CF demo jump during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway in February. Pal Bergan and Ronne Hengsen jumped with a big flag held between the jumpers.
Records and events
France kept a record week again. Patrick Castella was organizing. They tried three times to build a 42-way jewel. The last one was complete but not for long enough. Still, the next morning, they decided to try a different formation. A 43-way jewel was completed on the first jump and the next jump also set a new record, a 45-way jewel. The records were done in Pujaut in June. They were using Contact and Diamant mains.
Canadian jumpers broke the 11-year-old 11-plane record when they built a 14-plane in August. They needed nine attempts in Quebec. The record attempts were jumped in a hot air balloon festival.
In Locarno, the jumpers from Switzerland built a 17-way diamond in September. All used Express mains and the record succeeded on the fifth jump.
Diamond Quest had kept several training camps since 1993. In total, there were about 300 jumpers who took part in the camps. In October they kept a record week in Davis, CA. There were 67 jumpers and they came from four different countries (USA, Canada, Argentina and Finland). The new world record, a 46-way diamond was built in October and it was held for 37.3 seconds. After that there were nine 51-way attempts.
”Greorgia’s Base”, the base 22-way of the formation had done about 120 training jumps since spring. Pasi Pirttikoski was the only European jumper and the first Nordic jumper ever to participate in a CF world record. All jumpers used similarly coloured Prodigy mains.
Competitions
The 5th World Championships in CF were held in Kooralbyn, Australia. Dates were October 8. -16, the same time DQ was doing the record week. France won the rotation and the sequential again. 8-speed gold came to the States again. A Twin Otter and A Caravan hauled the jumpers in the competition. Team France set a new rotation record, 21 points using Rubis 150 mains. In 8-speed they built a kite in record time, 29.28, again using Rubis mains. US jumper Sharon Shumway was the first female competitor to hold a CF competition record. Her team ”Plane Crazy” scored 13 points in Australia using Express mains.