After enduring a little bit of constructive criticism (and some outright moaning), the task committee contrived to split the race wide open with a cunningly selected turn point some sixty odd kilometers to the south with a huge 35 km radius and goal at Zarzal. The idea was clearly to give us a multitude of options which included crossing the valley early, late or not at all. Bravo task committee, except for the fact that the majority crossed early and then the conditions didn't play nice with the whole valley clouding over wrecking the pecking order spectacularly.
The survivors managed to scrape themselves off of the valley floor and just as we were hopeful of actually finishing the task, a barrier of rain and highly visible gust front forced Nicci to stop the task. No surprises that 80 pilots covered between seventy and eighty of the hundred and ten kilometers.
The start was cloud flying chaos and I have video footage of blatant cheating at the first crossing by at least a dozen of the first group popping out of the clouds WAY above base. Sadly you can't make out any numbers and although one or two of the bastards tried half heartedly to lose some height after the fact it was a reminder of the corrupt ethic that exists in pockets of the paragliding world cup. That is not to say I have never been in cloud during competion, but I like to think that I have made honest attempts at rectifying any indiscretion.
Team SA had a less than perfect day with equipment malfunction and premature landing maneuvers with yours truly managing a mediocre performance some 8km behind Mark Watts who might have won the day.
The boys report: low and slow, not at all, and bitterly disappointed by col Moeg, st Kristoffel and Red respectively.
1 comment:
If you share the video, it could be possible to detect the cheaters by the GPS track. Cloudflying sucks!
Sad to hear about all the cheating going on (as well people flying much faster then the others)
Regards Lukas
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