Great question. Let me expand a bit for anyone thinking about it. You can see by the date range that the event spans a whole week, but the actual slinging for the World Cup is only on Saturday and Sunday at the end. There are practice competitions and other events all week, but it's only the last two days that are required. Slingers will show up at different days all week. I always get a flight on Tuesday and arrive Wednesday. So you don't need to be there all week. It's up to you and how it fits in your schedule.
There aren't published rules, but it's pretty simple. The World Cup is a total of 20 tennis balls at short distance (13 meters, or maybe the switch to 15m finally happens this year) and 20 stones at 20 meters. You will sling 5 shots at a time. There can be a bit of a wait. You might sling 5 and then wait half an hour or more before going again. It can change but last year we did all the tennis balls on Saturday and all the stones on Sunday. I like that more than having half and half days.
The best piece of advise I can give you is do the Practical Paracord Online Competition (
https://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1676666931). And when it starts back up in March, do it every week. It's literally the best training tool. It can help by:
- It keeps you practicing every week.
- It helps you get used to slinging when it's 'time to sling', and not just when you feel like it. You need to give Channing the date/time when you're going to sling. And you need to go at that time whether you're ready or not. Just like when your name gets called at the World Cup.
- You'll get familiar with Channing and other guys in the comp who will be at World Cup.
- You'll get familiar with what competition looks and feels like and it won't be as much of a surprise when you get there. Not to take away from the fact that live competition is a whole other beast in itself.