Jonny Durand crosses the line. Photo: Ed Ewing
Jonny Durand won the day yesterday at the World Hang Gliding Championships in France. He raced through the pack to fly 113 km in 2hrs 5 mins.
The flight puts him in third place on the leader board. With only one more task to go Manfred Ruhmer (AUT) is still leading the comp, with Italy’s Alex Ploner in second.
Christian Ciech (ITA) has slipped down the rankings after leading the field earlier in the week. He made a basic error in Task 5 by waiting for a second start gate while storms were forecast, building, and the task was likely to be stopped. When it was stopped he finished the day in 66th place.
The task was controversial as it scored 1,000 points, despite being stopped with pilots only half way round the course. It was later rescored after a bug was found in the scoring programme, provoking an official complaint from the Austrian team.
The complaint was later rejected by meet director Heather Mull. If the Austrian’s are unhappy with Mull’s decision the next step would be to lodge an official protest with the FAI. Italy and Austria have been battling it out over the protested Task 5 because the debugged scoring programme changes the point scores of some of their key pilots. Italy is currently in first place ahead of Austria in the team competition.
The last day of competition is today, Friday 3 July, and barring an upset Austria’s Manfred Ruhmer looks set to win the World Championships for a fourth time.
Follow the action online at www.chabre2009.blogspot.com. Results at www.chabre2009.com
