Advertisement
Published: July 18th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Headquarters
...where we work. I am currently in Sigillo, Italy, where the Hanggliding World Championships take place from the 16th to the 30th of July. I flew to Rome, and there, I got a lift with Joakim and Hakan from the Swedish team, which was great. I still remember what a hassle it was when I caught a train from Rome to Sigillo last year.
This year, there are 148 pilots from 35 nations. And the organisers put a lot of effort into the preparations. You can find the whole organising team, actual information, and also the framework programme on the website
www.cucco2011.com.
I am a jury member this year. This means that, together with my co-jury member Dennis Pagen (USA) and our jury president Flip Koetsier (Netherlands), I have to make sure that the competition is fair and safe. In doing so, we represent the international free flight commission, the
CIVL (Commission Internationale de Vol Libre), which is the hanggliding and paragliding section of the
FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale). The other representatives the CIVL sends to a competition like this is two stewards, this time Heather Mull (Australia) and Francoise Dieuzeide (France). Their task is to give advice to the organiser. Both jobs, jury and steward, mean that you have
Hanggliding legend
... Bill Moyes (second from the right), with his wife Molly, his son-in-law Greg (right), and jury member Dennis Pagen. to be aware of the general rules and regulations that apply to a World Championship in general and the local rules and regulations that were made up especially for this competition. Altogether, I would say that there are at least 100 pages of text.
From the beginning on, there is more than enough work to do. On Friday, sprog measurement started. For all my non-hanggliding readers: This means that certain settings of the gliders are measured by experts in order to make the gliders safe to fly. On Saturday, we started registration. This process is rather complex as well because the pilots have to fulfil a number of requirements if they want to participate in a world championship. First, they have to be qualified, meaning that they have to have flown in certain competitions of the adequate class. They also need to have paid the entrance fee, they need to have insurance, they need certified helmets and gliders, and they need a sporting license issued by the FAI that is a kind of formal permission to participate in FAI sanctioned competitions. Just to name a few of the requirements. So 148 pilots had to follow a kind of course
Flip & Davis
Flip, our jury president, and Davis, founder and author of the OzReport. around headquarters in order to register.
But finally, yesterday afternoon, we were finished with registrations, so the grand opening ceremony could start. There was a buffet at a hotel in Sigillo and then a parade through the village, from the hotel to the town hall, with the mayor and other representatives leading the way, followed by the FAI representatives, the organising team, and then the national teams. There were a few speeches, and then, there was a big show that I found impressive, but also kind of weird because I did not get the sense of the whole performance. There were people on stilts and in great costumes involved, along with fire and fireworks. And the plot was some mythology, but I did not get all of it (and neither did most other pilots and staff, to my defence 😊). The beginning was on Prometheus stealing the fire from the Greek gods, and in the end, there was Icarus getting too close to the sun with his wings made of wax and feathers. Afterwards, there was a party, which we left fairly early because there was work awaiting us the next day.
This morning, we had a safety
briefing in which all pilots had to participate, and not long after that, there was another briefing for the team leaders (which took four hours altogether because there is always a lot to discuss, especially on the question which parts of the rules can be changed and which can’t). Today, there is no flying because of very strong winds at launch and because of a cold front that is approaching, which will also make it impossible to fly the next two or three days. So time for me to write a little bit for you!
This, however, does not mean that things are getting boring. For one thing, it is great to see my friends here. But there is also some other, well, kind of entertainment with little scandals. In the local rules and regulations, it says that pilots are not allowed to register unless they have certified helmets. Gerolf, one of the best pilots in the world and member of the Austrian national team, decided that he did not agree with that rule, refused to buy a helmet that met the requirements and therefore did not register and won’t participate in the comp. I do not want to
Jeff Shapiro
... from the US team. write too much on this issue here, but if you like, follow the discussion on the
OzReport.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.107s; Tpl: 0.026s; cc: 11; qc: 31; dbt: 0.038s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb