Martin Muller (centre), Wojciech Pomierski (left) and Dominic Schaertl, winners of the XC Open Portugal 2011
Martin Muller won the XC Open World Series Portugal leg, held 27 August to 3 September in Series Serra de Estrela e Mirandela. He flew a best distance of 225km in this open distance XC comp.
Martin, fresh from flying the Red Bull X-Alps, won the comp flying a serial class Niviuk Peak 2. All pilots were on serial class gliders.
XC-Open organiser Hans Bausenwein said, “57 pilots from 11 nations flew an accident free competition on certified gliders under the motto have fun, fly safe and fly far.”
All pilots were provided with Flymaster live trackers, which meant, Hans said, “perfect retrieves”.
“Martin Muller who proved his skills with a 225km flight from Linhares to the north-east had to wait only just a little over an hour to be picked-up.”
Despite flying six days out of eight though, light conditions meant only two days were actually scored as valid. Three days were declared not valid as not enough pilots managed to score the minimum distance while three other days were cancelled.
The lack of valid tasks despite flying almost every day in Portugal prompted a re-think of the rules. From now, according to the XC-Open website, tasks flown in the XC-Open World Series will be valid as soon as one pilot has flown a minimum distance of 30km.
Reporting on the website organisers said: “According to the 2011 competition rules 15% of the pilots need to be beyond 30 km to have a valid 1000 points task.
“For the 2012 XC-Open World Series starting with the XC-Open in Argentina in November we decided to have a valid task even after the first pilot has flown 30km.”
The next competition in the XC-Open World Series – an open distance, serial class cross country series of competitions at different sites around the world – will take place from November 21-27 in Carpinteria, Argentina.
RESULTS
Open (Serial Class)
1 Martin Muller (CH), Niviuk Peak 2
2 Wojciech Pomierski (PL), Niviuk Peak 2
3 Dominic Schaertl (DE), Nova Mentor 2. Dominic also won the Sport and Fun class as was flying an EN B paraglider
Women
1 Lydia Muys (DE), Swing Arcus 6
First Team
DHV Jugend Super Bock
Dominic Schaertl, Nova Mentor 2
Janis Stübenrath, Skywalk Poison 3
Matthias von Necker, Nova Tattoo
Christoph Bessei, Nova Factor
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