Competition News

Today a 58km Task was set wich was pretty straight forward on the paper, but at the end, left us with different approaches.
For the airstart, we took off in the higher mountains and then had a cylinder in the flats where it was just a short out and return. Next we were heading back in to the mountains in to the North-East part where (at least we were told so) never before a task was set. After the north-easterly waypoint, we were heading back over the take off and further to the west. For the final glide the plan was then to come back to the take off again, gain height, take one more waipoint in the flats and then come back to the landing field.

After the airstart and the glide out and returning to the mountain, the first fiew kilometers were really fast and basically only ridge racing. We were all pretty well positioned and kept pushing hard on the ridge.
Back at the take off, flying direction the westerly turnpoint, the group was splitting the first time. Most of the pilots took the slightly longer route on the luv side of the hill where me and Jérôme went for the more direct route over through the lee side of the hill, which was kind of sketchy, as we were facing a lot of head wind coming around the hill at some point. The climbs were not that good and we kept pushing low for the next vally crossing, while the other pilots came in around 200m higher over our heads. Unfortunately there was no lift on the westerly waypoint and we had to head straight back direction the takeoff where we were able to get some hight on the lee side of the hill. Steve Cox was pushing hard against the wind and got to the luv side of the take off first of the swiss guys, but unfortunately the thermals were week and the wind was not really helping. Roger Aeschbacher and myself kept catching thermals on the lee side and tried to follow the leading group which was about 2 minutes ahead and around 200m higher, already on the luv side. I was lucky and just catched the important thermal below the leaders, while Roger had to keep on going to the next ridge to find some other thermals. During the final glide through the flats, I was able to catch up to the leaders. We had a good glide but it felt like dead air until we were around 300m over ground and I still needed glide ratio 10.5 to goal. We catched a week 0.5m/s thermal and only the four highest pilots out of our 16 pilots group, kept on going. I started going at glide ratio 9.5 to goal and made it with 100m over the line, 4 minutes behind the first pilots. In the end it could have worked without the last weak thermal, but with a high risk of bombing out.
The others of the swiss team came in within the next 15 minutes and it was overall a ok day for the swiss team.
Sarah Zimmermann made a really good move and went out to the flats earlier then the others, which was the shorter but riskier route. She was able to overtake a lot of other pilots on the final glide with finding a week convergence line in the flats, which was enough to get directly to goal. Thanks to this move she is now first in the women standings, while only flying on a Zeno!

Unfortunately there are also bad news for today. Cédric Aymon had a big collaps while pushing on the ridges, which was ending in a crash below the rocky cliffs. The hight was unfortely not enough in order to open the reserve. He got flown to the hospital in Feltre with the helicopter and was getting surgery on the same evening.
He is ok and will be able to leave the hospital in a few days. Fortunately he "only" has several broken bones on the leg, ribs and the connection between femur and hip, but no injuries to his back.
Morane Montavon was visiting him before surgery and his dad will arrive today.
We wish him a speedy recovery.

Pictures by Roger Aeschbacher and Sarah Zimmermann.