Closing Ceremony

Saturday morning we needed to get up early again to pack and be ready for the official closing ceremony at 10 am. Maria had brought along a book with wonderful photographs of Canadian landscapes. Virginia added a dedication, signed by us all, naming every staff member and thanking them for making our stay so memorable. I believe our hosts truly appreciated this memento of our stay when we presented it to them.

The awards and closing ceremony was very impressive. Once more, we were all decked out in our team uniforms. The top ten pilots in every class were named individually and called up on stage with third, second and first on the podium while their national flags were raised behind them and the national anthem of the winner's nation was played by a live orchestra. I kept thinking how close Jerzy had come to be in the top ten in the 18m Class. In the overall score Jerzy had placed in the top ten on five out of 8 contest days, getting as high as 5th on day 5. Even slipping to 11th on the last contest day, Jerzy made Canada the highest placing non-European nation in the 18m Class. Congratulations, Jerzy!

Some of the point results were very close. In the 18m class the point spread between 10th and 8th was 6 points and there was a tie for 6th place.


Besides having a World Champion in the 18m Class, France also won the Team Cup which is based on a team score of all classes, combining the results of Rieti and Luesse.


There was a big cheer in the German camp when Michael Sommer, the defending world champion took the center podium again in open class and second place also went to a German pilot.

Hungary, as the host of the next World Championships, was very happy with the decisive win of György Gulyas in the 15m Class.

The Russian aeroclub gave a special award to the three female competitors.

The FAI flag gets handed over to Hungary, the host of the next World Gliding Championships.

After the ceremony we said our good-byes to some old friends and many new ones, in particular the Serbian team from Vancouver, Branko, Nicola and Dimitri. I had a flight to catch, so I was the fist to depart. After having spent almost every waking minute with the Team for the past three weeks it felt strange and sad to leave the rest of the Team behind.

This was my third Worlds and my first as team manager.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you, the readers of this blog, for following along and for your messages of support. They helped a lot to motivate and encourage our competitors. Also, again a heartfelt thank-you to all our sponsor who supported the team and helped making it happen. I truly hope, one day we will see two Canadian pilots each in at least two classes, so we can effectively team fly.

End of Blog - 2008 Luesse

Farewell Party

It was raining pretty much all day Friday. We spent the day sorting out and settling outstanding accounts with the organizers as well as preparing the gliders for shipping and to go back to the owners.

At 7p we joined the other teams for a big farewell party. It was a nice surprise to meet our old friend Darek and his daughters at the party. Darek was a very active SOSA member in the ninties before he moved to the Carribean with his family. He and his daughters, who were a riot at SOSA then and are young ladies now, are touring Europe and decided to drop in for the closing ceremony of the Worlds. It turned out to be a great party, great food, great entertainment and great company. After two intense weeks, everybody enjoyed the opportunity to relax and have fun. The contest organizers put on fabulous fireworks before the party got pretty wild in the events hangar.

It's over!

Good Morning Canada!

The forecast today said no usable thermals! The day is officially canceled which means that yesterday or day 8 was the last contest day of the 30th World Championships.

The scores are still preliminary but I am not aware of any pending protests, so in all likelihood there won't be any significant changes in the final scores.

Jerzy finished an excellent 11th in the 18m Class. For many days he maintained a position in the first 10 which gave us hopes he would finish there. Placing within the first 10 or near it, means placing among current and former world champions! Jerzy placed just ahead of Doug Jacobs, 15m world champion in 1985 who was also on the podium in '87 and 91. Please join me all in congratulating Jerzy!

The 15m Class was dominated early on by the Hungarian pilot György Gulyas. He took the lead early on and managed to increase it steadily. Although he finished in 9th place yesterday, he still widened his lead to 335 points! Typically the margins between first and second are less than 100 points.

Janusz Centka from Poland, a three times world champion, had an excellent flight yesterday and managed to zoom up from 5th to 2nd place overall. I guess, for him it was really pedal to the metal.

Mark Leeuwenburgh, the young pilot from Holland who Dave had shared a field with on his best day of the contest, is ecstatic that he will be on the podium in third place. These are his first world championships.

Dave had great days and terrible days. He had a costly landout early on, he finished second, only one point behind the winner on day 4, but in the end his hopes of placing well were sunk when he ran into airspace on day 7 and ended up with only 13 points on a 840 point day. An earlier error in setting a turnpoint zone correctly was not as serious but still took 50 points out of his score. It made the difference between placing in the low twenties and 37th.

The 15m Class Competitors

The 18m Class Competitors

As unwieldy they are on the ground, once in the air, Open Class ships are incredibly graceful and their finishes are a treat to watch.

Everyone here knows Art Grant, the contest volunteer from Manitoba. He is always in a good mood and always quick to lend a hand.

Day 8 wrap-up

Jerzy came in at 16:28 after spending 3:54 hrs on task. The resulting speed was 116.46 kph which was good for 888 points and place 23. Doug Jacobs (USA) won the day in 18m Class with a speed of 123.68 kph.

The conditions which had looked so good in the morning and early afternoon started to deteriorate later as thick cirrus pushed in from the south. The photo above was taken around 5:15p, 45 minutes after Jerzy had landed. This was a problem for the 15m Class since their turnpoint far to the SE was under the cirrus early in the game.

It turned into a long wait for Dave. I kept looking up while I helped Jerzy de-rig XG, as the sky got worse and worse . Finally, around 6p, Dave overflew the finish line after having been on task for nearly 5 hrs. We were all relieved he had made it home. Dave told me later that the last 170 km were just a struggle into the wind with weak thermals. He teamed up with some prominent British and French pilots but this time they happened to be slow. His speed of 84.87 kph was good for 675 points out of 1000 which landed Dave in 37th place for the day. The winner, Graham Parker of Australia had clocked 103.72 kph.

In the overall 18m scores, Jerzy dropped from 8th to 11th, just ahead of Doug Jacobs (US). Although we had all hoped he would manage to get back to 5th place, this is still an excellent result. Jerzy is the highest placed pilot from a non-European nation in the 18m Class.

The forecast for tomorrow is calling for solid stratus clouds and rain. It is quite possible that the overall results as of today will be the final results for the 30th World Gliding Championships. However the French team is not taking any chances and they sent their pilots to bed early. Stay tuned...

Day 8

Good Morning Canada!

Discussed yesterday's airspace penalty with Dave this morning. Unfortunately, it is a clear cut case and there is no point trying to do something about it - he was scored as landed out after 9.3 km. Getting 13 points on a 840 point day is of course a killer.

The weather today is great. Still the same airmass as yesterday but less wind and less moisture. This translates into plenty of cu but with higher bases and less tendency to spread out. The cu are lining up to form nice SW/NE cloud streets. Cloud base is forecast to go up to 6400 ft with up to 6 kts thermals. The only fly in this are some cirrus fields that might affect the task area.


18m has an interesting task today, taking them clockwise around the greater Berlin area. It's a 455.4 km assigned speed task. They will have the benefit of a long downwind leg north of Berlin where the WSW winds are forecast to be stronger than here south of Berlin. However, the area of the southbound leg east of Berlin, along the river Oder which forms the border to Poland, is known to be weak.

Jerzy (XG) went on task at 12:34. Assuming a speed of 130 kph, we expect him to be back around 16:00 (10 am eastern daylight). Keep checking the daily and overall score sheets.

Today is likely to be the last contest day, so many pilots will go on the all out attack. It's now or never!

Jerzy is currently in 8th place with 5221 points. Everything up to 5th place is within easy reach and less than 10 points ahead of Jerzy. On the other hand, current 12th place is only 84 points behind Jerzy. A lot can happen today!

15m is flying a 422.3 km assigned speed task to the east and south east. There have been many tasks in this part of the task area, so the pilots are quite familiar with it. Dave started at 13:06. Assuming a speed of 125 kph, he should be back around 16:30 (10:30 am eastern daylight).

Oh no! - day 7 wrap-up

The strong SW winds did not cause significant problems at altitude since there was good streeting. Dave told me, he was running cloud streets on the into wind leg and only needed two thermals. However, when the competitors returned to Luesse, the surface wind was gusting to 30 kts. We saw some hairy landings.

Jerzy did very well, finishing 8th for the day with a speed of 115.03 kph and achieving 765 points out of 832 possible. Overall Jerzy is now tied for 8th place in the 18m Class. There are great opportunities to advance, since the point spread to 5th place is only 10 points! However, he could just as easily slip back since 11th place is only 45 points behind Jerzy.

Dave's speed of almost 100 kph would have put him in 18th place for the day. Unfortunately, as it turns out, he hit airspace on the first leg. The penalty for airspace violation is outlanding at the point where he entered the airspace. So for the time being, Dave ended up with 13 points for the day - ouch! He had turned off the airspace warning because he was climbing close to the bird sanctuary north of Luesse. Dave didn't turn it back on right away when he went on course and bumped into the FL35 ceiling of the Berlin airspace. I will be scrutinizing his file and discussing this with the scorer tomorrow to ensure Dave's altitude has been properly corrected for the actual pressure of the day and the calibration of the logger.

The weather tomorrow is forecast to be similar to today but a bit drier and less wind. In other words, conditions could be strong. Looking ahead to Friday, it is likely that tomorrow will be the last contest day of the 30th Worlds. A lot of pilots will be pulling out all stops.

How many trailers do you count?

This is what we see every morning when we arrive at the south side of the runway with our bikes - trailers lined up almost the entire length of the 8000 ft runway!