I’m flying home tomorrow morning, will be back on Sunday or Monday,

Best,

Mads Syndergaard

Yesterday the task setters sent us out on a 117 km ordeal in all but blue conditions, and with a goal at a record 2900m ASL. We had a 5km entry cylinder around B31, some 12km south of launch. Almost everybody waited at Crazy, to glide out some 5-6 minutes before the start gate, and I for one depended on my XC Trainer to tell me when to go. Said instrument has a function where it counts down to the start time, and shows how fast one must glide to be there on time, and I left from max. altitude when it said 46km/h, and to my joy the speed counter kept creeping up so that at one point it said 120 km/h, indicating that I would be some comfortable seconds late for the start – only then all of a sudden it said 24 km/h, and I had to turn parallel to the start cylinder for maybe 30 seconds, losing valuable altitude all the way! Never trust electronics…

We had to take the B31 after the start gate, and then it was back to B01 Three Kings, before heading north to B23 Saucos. As the day was blue it seemed pilots were rather reluctant to push out (as opposed to yesterday when some pilots were going like bats out of hell), and the gaggle kept reforming again in spite of slightly different route choices here and there. From Saucos it was back south to that old acquaintance of ours, the B30 Aguila, and the Crazy mesa offered the logical route choice, with a buoyant and bouncy glide until the end, when the sink out towards the turnpoint got evil. A few of us arrived below the turnpoint, but there was a reliable thermal there marked by the resident Black Vultures, and although some, myself included, had been delayed a bit by the low save, the gaggle was soon reformed. Back towards the southern tip of the Crazy mesa and a good climb, and another bouncy glide over to the high terrain N of launch. There was a fire going up on the plateau just south of Escaleria, and this gave us the last good climb back to 3700 or thereabouts. I must admit I had my doubts about the 2900 m goal by then, the day seemed to be shutting down, but we got a very floaty tailwind glide to a good if somewhat mellow thermal some 10k’s from goal. From there it was all about who was into gambling (a few outlandings in his bag already) or into safing, and Micky and Farmer went for it like hounds after bait. In the end Micky beat Farmer in by a measly 1 second, with the lead gaggle all following within the next two minutes, and once we had the 4 km end of speed section in the bag we could leisurely climb to a safe altitude before gliding into one of the most scenic goal fields I have ever seen, complete with sheep flocks, mounted cowboys, conifers all around, and little dusties being formed every time a pilot touched down. The half moon was clearly visible over the volcano (Nevado de Toluca) and it was all just perfect – that is, until you realised that, this being Mexico, they had dragged that Hummer with the sound system up there and were pumping loud music out into the suspended Garden of Eden. Ah well.

I noticed that Andi was a little late into goal, but I am sure his lead is such that this was purely a sensible precaution on his side. The way I see it he only needs to make goal again today to be a very worthy world Champion, and it pleases me to see.

From a UP perspective I was happy to see Torsten make it in with the lead gaggle as well, I think that he has a very honourable position in this comp on his hands too, provided he makes goal today. More about that later, now it is time to hit the (dirt) road and eat some dust,

Cheers from Valle de Bravo, second to last on-site report,
Mads

After a good climb to cloudbase at Crazy we pushed on over the valley towards Maguey, then along the usually reliable ridge towards the turnpoint. I was in a small group with among others Martin Orlik, and we felt we knew the ridge well enough by now to not need any climbs along the way, only the wind today was more N so the ridge wasn’t actually working. To be brutally honest with you it was a scary leg that one, dodging trees and cliffs and battling a hefty headwind all the way. One other pilot on a Magus opted for a slightly less tree-hugging line, and paid for it by arriving extremely low at the end of the ridge. I don’t know if he got up again, but if he did it would have been a long battle.

As it was we got a good climb at the turnpoint, and could point our noses over the mesa towards the E end of the lake and eventually towards Elefante and a 3km turnpoint radius around it. By now we were battling a strongish headwind, and the group I was in managed to get pretty low again just E of the lake, but eventually a good climb took us back into the game and we could glide to the turnpoint. There we had another fine thermal which took us all the way to cloudbase, and we followed a huge cloud street back towards the launch. Sadly the last turnpoint was not around launch but further W, at the 3 Kings, so we had to leave our cloud street eventually. That was when the wind suddenly switched to S, and to cut a long story short I got stopped by it in a valley between Crazy (or the G-spot) and Maguey. I tried to soar the G-spot cliffs, I tried to get out from the middle of the valley, but in the end I just had to bite the dust and get ready for a long hike out.

As you all know, landing short isn’t really my idea of a great afternoon. I always struggle to be just remotely civilised towards the everpresent kids materialising out of nowhere, but today this task was made harder by the fact that they had brought a puppy which they happily commenced to torment as soon as they had settled down to stare at the Gringo packing. So I packed my wing to the accompaniment of a squeeling puppy, something that left me in a bit of dilemma since the kids found it really funny that I should take umbrage to their actions – this in turn meant that the more I tried to get them to stop, the more fun the tormenting was. I packed in a hurry and left, hope the puppy grows up to be a big rabid mongrel that bites their sorry arses to shreds.

I don’t know who won today, all of team Denmark was short although Morten only missed goal by 600m. It did seem to me that the usual suspects were in goal, so I predict little changes in the top echelons of our event.

AMAZING flying by the top pilots here, their consistency is otherworldly. And another thing: Put enough skilled pilots out on an impossible mission and suddenly the impossible becomes trivial. Today’s task was by far the most tricky to get in the bag, yet the goal was busy I’m told.

I need an early night but I have a meeting tonight with Gasper about the Nordic Open. Anyone doing this for holidays must have a busy schedule at home.

Mads S from Valle (grumpy)

Task was 114 km long, with the first turnpoint being the same as yesterday, Santa Maria, out in the ”flats” around 20 km SE of launch. After that we had to come back over the 3 Kings and Maguey and on to B15 (Mesa de Dolores) NW of launch, from there along the low hills to B41 Elefante (3km cylinder), then back via the Crazy Thermal Mesa to B26 Lapila (this is some 20km S of launch), and back to a goal 1 km around the Cerro Gordo, B48.

Winners are reported to be Yassen (again!) and Chrigel, but I only have that 2nd hand as I sadly wasn’t there to watch the show. As usual it was all about getting the lines right, one particular line comes to mind as I’m writing this: We were coming back from the 3 Kings and gliding towards Sacamacate, and I left with Martin Orlik who was understandably as frustrated as myself at being late and behind. He was a few metres off to my right, yet when we arrived at Sacamacate I had plenty altitude to hunt around for a weak, elusive climb whilst Martin only had altitude to flare his wing! I’d love to be able to truthfully state that this was proof of my wing’s superiority, but sadly it is not so – I just got a better line!

I’m constantly amazed by the low saves people have here. Another pilot on an Axis came in only metres above Martin (was it Wagga??) and hooked a decent thermal back to cloudbase, from literally treetop altitude.

The lift areas were big today, and we all know what that means don’t we? MASSIVE sink in between, worse than any previous day. I had 5.5m/s down for extended periods several times today – that can really rid a bloke of excess altitude in a hurry.

I did the glide into goal with Jeremie, Primoz, Americo and others, and although we were a bit low at Cerro Gordo we arrived at 800m above the landing. Plenty of time to contemplate a day spent catching up, to no avail.

The task was long today, but not very interesting – there really weren’t many route choices to be made, and that is in my view what makes an interesting task. I’m not complaining though, as they have made good tasks on all the other days and it does keep getting harder to think of new things to do now that we’ve had 8 tasks here. Plus I’m well pleased that I have managed to get in every day so far, lets hope that continues.

We had the UP dinner last night, was amazed to see how many we actually are here – I think we were 16-17 people around that table. Torsten supplied a gentleman from Kazakhstan (??) with a reserve wing (sorry I have forgotten your name) and Phil is flying another UP reserve wing, so the table was really full. We didn’t make it into much of a working dinner, but Torsten and I did sort of make the transfer of responsibilities official plus we told a little about the future of comp wing design. I had a great evening, hope the rest did the same.

3 more tasks, nothing is settled yet, but I was rather enjoying my brief spell in the top 15 in this event.

Mads S

Good ceiling today, around 3400m right from the beginning, meant that Yassen and myself actually never got even half low. I do hope this is a sign of things to come, as it sure is a way more relaxed form of comp flying.

Had Rob and Ty interview me on the landing so that Caroline can show it to Nora – she likes it when Daddy is on TV J. I think there should be a good dose of leadout points for myself today, one day she’ll understand and appreciate that too!

Danish team mate Morten also in goal, sadly Marcus isn’t. Dunno how we’ll ever kick the Norwegian arses if we don’t all make it to goal every day… Stefan Rolén is on the terrace here next to me reattaching his risers to his lines after a reserve deployment right after launch. He’s safe and sound, and the canopy is too, but he’ll be up late fixing some snapped lines I think.

We’re doing the long-awaited UP team dinner tonight, I have been up at the DiPao restaurant to reserve a table for 12-14 people, looking forward to seeing how many actually show up! Those who don’t won’t get their t-shirts!

Ronny is styling, Andi Aebi is styling (as predicted), Luca Donini just seems to ALWAYS get it right, and there’s a clear trend here now. The Czechs are just absolutely unbeatable in the team rankings, they don’t seem to know the word ”mistake”, very impressive. Fantastic flying it is too.

In memory of our friend Stefan Schmoker, we miss him and try to honour him by flying our butts off,

Cheers from Valle de Bravo, Mads S signing out for now,

Or, as it were, in the evening…Am writing this out on the little terrace in front of our team apartment. On the terrace below is the landlord and his police-officer friend, sharing a doobie, and the smell is pleasantly wafting up my way so I can pretend that this, and not flying fatigue, is the cause of my dizzyness!

Today’s task was a record 114km long, and since one can’t just fly straight lines here we flew WAY longer than that. I’ve had upwards of five hours in the air, and the thermal activity was shutting down good before we finally made it across the 1km virtual goal cylinder.

There was more Cu development today, and with around 50-60 pilots in goal I guess we have to admit that the task setters got it all right again. The flying was super pleasant, with proper thermals, relatively calm glides and many options in terms of route choices. We started with a 6km exit cylinder around launch at 1245, moved SW towards Lapila, then back to a little knob behind Valle proper (Elefante), over to El Penon, from there SE (I think) to Tezca, back in front of launch and Le Penon to Escalera and then into goal at G03.

As has happened the other days pilots were taking turns pushing out in front so the pace is brisk, and to my pleasure I’m seeing even pilots in the top 10 pushing hard – you guys rock. I’ve been hanging lots with Jean-Marc and Greg Blondeau today, and although the guys are in the top 3 they still push and show the way – too cool.

Ronny, myself and Yassen, and Wagga Watts and the Valics, Pepe Malecki and most everyone really, have also been chasing leadout points today, these make a noticable difference to the scores so it pays to be on the ball, and since that is what they’re made to do I guess they’re working as intended. The lead gaggle took a real prudent line over to the Elefante turnpoint today, trying to stick with the convergence as long as we could. This proved an opportunity for the second wave to catch up, and catch up they did. Coming back from Elefante over the high ground it got pretty shady and quite a few pilots got caught there. Once we were back onto the Sacamacate knob things started to heat up, and much time could be made up by getting the glide from there to El Penon right. 14 years of practice flying here is proving pretty advantageous for Ronny – he seems to always get the lines right, and I’m actually not too proud to be pimpin’ a bit on that experience… The way to Tezca looked awfully blue so we were going a bit more mellow on that leg, and it proved the right thing to do as the turnpoint wasn’t actually working in spite of a good Cu sitting over it. As it was, the pilots who stopped right on the 4km cylinder to climb in some weak stuff had it much better than those few who pushed on to try and get the cloud but only found zeroes. MANY pilots got caught there, and since there was a 20km headwind on the leg back towards launch you needed all the altitude you could get to make it onto the launch ridge.

It was fun to watch all the gliders being pushed to close to their max speed coming back into the wind there. I must say I’m really impressed with the stability of the things, no one seems to have any serious problems going 60+km/h into a fairly strong and bumpy headwind – just think of the deathships we were flying ten years ago!

Once we connected to the launch ridge again there was a decent climb to be had, and from there there was a choice of going around the back bowl (potentially in the lee of El Penon) or round the front of said rock. Olli and a few others went the back route and got a good climb there, while another group with myself in it tried the front and got hammered a bit in the turbulence there. I then let myself drift back a bit from El Penon, while Jean-Marc and some others did the sensible thing and stayed on the windward side, only my move paid off and I soon found myself climbing up to meet the lead group right before the glide towards the last turnpoint at Escalera. Once that was bagged we needed about 200 m of extra altitude to be sure to glide into goal, but luckily Pepe was ahead a few 100 m and had already found a nice mellow climb for us. Then it was really about when you thought you had enough for the reamining 6km of gliding, and as usual that happened pretty simultaneously so we all crossed within a few seconds of each other. As it turned out two pilots had actually escaped the gaggle unnoticed so they beat us by a good few minutes, and lots of pilots were just short of the goal in spite of making the 1km end of speed section.

The results will see a great shakeup after this task. Many of the leaders appear to have landed short, including, sadly, Eric Reed who has been in the lead until now.

Phil Broers thrashed his wing in a tree yesterday so he’s now flying that UP proto that Ronny didn’t like. He made it till shortly before goal and seemed content so that’s good news. And rumour has it that Jouni from Finland has put his reserve glider in trees today, wonder what he’ll be flying then?? The bad news, from a Danish perspective, is that both my team mates landed short, with Morten allegedly also hanging from a tree somewhere, so maybe he’ll be launching on my trusted old Edge tommorrow. We’ll need to sort the risers on that thing, I stole them last night to put them on my current proto and if Torsten doesn’t have extra trimmers here then I can’t really let Morten fly it. Lots to sort, and time is already 8 PM, so this is where this blog entry ends, thanks for reading the rants, oh and by the way to Bruce I passed your message on to Phil and he says he’s been trying like mad to reach you but to no avail, real strange.
Mads.

Today was the best flying day we have had so far, with real thermals originating from real thermal sources, nice cu’s popping overhead and not QUITE as dense airspace as yesterday.

Task was an 84 km thing back and forth in the local area around TO. We had a 6 km exit cylinder around TO, on towards the antenna at Divisa, then to Monarca over beyond the goal from the last few days and back to take launch as the last turnpoint before heading to Cerro Gordo for an end of speed section. From there it was a leisurely glide to goal in Valle, and you had to make the goal to get the speed points for the speed section.

Fastest pilots completed the course in something like 2h 20min, pretty good average considering the convergences never REALLY set up so we had to top up often, and also couldn’t go straight from Divisa to Monarca but had to come via Maguey instead.

Quite a few pilots suffered some very limited visibility due to fog at an altitude, will be interesting to see if anyone is penalised for this.

As far as I could tell Chrigel won the day, with several of his Advance team mates coming in together with him. I fear that Eric will have lost his lead today as he was some 7 minutes behind (I think) but results aren’t up yet so can’t know for sure. The Danish team had a glorious day today, all making goal within a minute of each other, and often actually taking turns leading the pack around during the course. I’m proud of my mates here, they are doing a great job. In total I’m guessing more than 100 pilots made it into goal, perfect tasksetting really since nobody likes landing out and there are simply more happy people around on such days.

I think Primoz was the fastest UP today, and sadly Olli landed somewhere along the line, so there are ups and downs on the team side of things. On my wing I was dismayed to discover that the right C-risers was all but worn through today (a grate on one of the trimmer purchase steel rings was eating away at the riser every time I pulled the trimmer down) so I have had to change risers tonight. The reserve set I had came off my old wing and weren’t 100% the same, which meant that I have been fixing for quite a few hours by now. While I was at it I (think I) fixed the left turn tendency, so with any luck I’ll be able to thermal both ways tomorrow, AND glide straight without leaning 15 degrees right all the time. Ahh the joys of comp wing ownership.

I have a feeling the results will get stirred through a bit today – who knows I may even be moving up the rankings a bit.

Oh and another thing – some genius on a Mantra insisted to glide wingtip to wingtip with me for 5-6ks in a turbulent headwind today, I got pretty annoyed with him after a while ’cos you don’t need much of an incident to be in each other’s lines when gliding that close. This was underscored a moment later when he was right above me and suffered a collapse – I had to all but stall to keep him off my canopy, and may have been swearing a trifle under my breath. Then again he probably thinks I was hanging too close!!!!

All for now – must really try to get some sleep,

Mads Syndergaard

Task was 94km around the launch, with a 2km entry cylinder around Maguey and the Maguey turnpoint after that. In reality the day hadn’t actually started when the window opened, and even getting to an altitude where you’d feel like crossing over to Penon and Crazy was hard work. It got really hectic while we waited for the start gate, since there was so little usable lift and so many pilots. As soon as the gate opened we made the move, only to find ourselves in even worse traffic  on the Maguey side of the valley. It got so hectic there that many pilots opted to just glide on without having comfortable altitude for the crossing back onto the Penon ridge, but it worked out surprisingly well all the same – not that the lift was strong, but there was clearly enough of it as in the end 92 pilots made it into goal!

From Maguey we went down south to Aguila (B30) and the going was slow and tricky. We were all thermalling in most anything that made the thing go beep, and still arrived at Aguila pretty low. The NE side was obviously not facing into the sun, so I had my doubts, but it worked fine all the same. Very broken, lots of drift, but we got back to around 3000m and headed back towards launch and ultimately towards Saucos, beyond yesterday’s goal. A few pilots decked it in front of launch after failing to connect to the ridge there, and I very nearly did the same, was in a gully below the Piano landing and had to soar up to the landing to catch a tight  little bitch of a thermal that finally got me back into the race. From launch we aimed for the convergence and finally hit decent altitudes, with my meter stopping at around 3500m. The glide to Saucos was super fast due to the tailwind but I was certain that we’d all be decked by the headwind coming back towards launch and the Diente (B44) turnpoint that was to be the last of the day. As it turned out the glide back into wind was amazing – I lost 500m in 14km – and we could connect to the good thermal up on the plateau that had propelled us to 3500m on the way out.

Then it was back along the Penon ridge down to Diente, lots of headwind going out to it, back to the ridge and via Penon into goal at G03 Quintanilla. The owner of the landing field is a friendly dude, he’s been walking around handing out cold beers to all the horrid gringos taking over his field both yesterday and today – he deserves a big thanks.

One thing that is really striking here is how much the level has improved since my last Worlds – the speed is up, and so far we’ve had 90+ people in goal every day on days that I have considered challenging. The altitudes quoted above are deceptive since we’re flying over some really high ground, and even 3500m often doesn’t feel so high if you’re over a plateau at 2800m.

There were some reserves today, and Jouni from Finland went and got stuck in the top of some really tall trees. I heard from his team mates that he had been sitting in his harness hanging from the tree with his reserve in his hand, prepared to throw it should the branches break! Seems Jouni will need to change wings as his lovely Gradient didn’t appreciate the extra stress, but other than that he was in good spirits once he got back on the ground.

There’s some talk of doing a slightly shorter task tomorrow, with a later start, to avoid the scary 150 pax gaggles in the really weak thermals early in the day.

Oh, and I’ve discovered that my wing actually has nice handling (I was sure it was a real dog) as long as I turn left (which I never do), so I’ll need to get to launch early tomorrow to fix the trim. Wim from Belgium has been flying the prototype that Ronny didn’t like, and he’s loving it, and Stephan has sent me some drawings of internal bracing that we can cut out to make the wing more dynamic in turbulence (!) so there’s plenty to play with if only the days had more than 24 hours in them. I need to sleep!

Goodnight from Valle de Bravo, Mexico

Mads Syndergaard

Frantic lumberjackin’ ensued, with friends materialising from everywhere with machetes and saws, and the glider and I were freed in maybe 20 minutes. Some line sorting was now needed, so I ended up being one of the last to launch but fortunately still managed to be at the start gate in time.

First leg was out into the ”flats” SW of launch, and the gaggle was big and competitive. The air was working on this first leg, and again it didn’t seem to matter much if one stopped to climb on the way or if one went straight for it – the groups met again at the turnpoint. From there it became less straight forward, with the next leg going into some lower hills towards the SE (llanos turnpoint, for those with local knowledge). The groups seemed more cautious here, taking whatever they could get, and I went and pushed out in front with Gasper (Prevc) and Wagga (Watts), a move that paid off for me and Gasper but not for Wagga – not sure where he went missing but he got delayed there somehow. Then it was almost full speed on to Llanos which was unfortunately in the shade and things got real slow for a while. By now two groups of leaders had formed, with Ronny leading one and Russ Ogden sort of leading the other, and they went separate ways. Next turnpoint was the antenna over WNW of launch, don’t remember the name but we were there yesterday as well. The Russ Ogden group went back over the first turnpoint and the flats, the Ronny group went back over launch and El Penon, and this time the two different options made a big difference, with Ronny’s group making way better time. I myself had a different idea, went around halfway down to the first turnpoint then branched off and headed straight out towards the 3 kings and the antenna ridge. This paid of nicely, and I managed to almost catch the leaders again over at the antenna. Coming back to the goal up on the plateau E of Valle we had hoped to catch the convergence over the high ground, but it never really materialised so many pilots opted for the safer route along the antenna ridge back towards launch. The leaders again got delayed in several places, and in spite of me feeling like I never hit any proper thermals I suddenly found myself racing into goal with Aljaz, David Ohlidahl and Frankie Brown. Another group had gone a more easterly route and their leaders snuck in together with us, but all in all I was well pleased with the result after a difficult start to the day.

Brad Gunn won the day, with Eric Reed in the top five, so Eric will probably still be in the lead – the yanks are kicking ass here, cool to watch.

Oh and by the way, fast final glides were just never really my thing but today I actually overtook Aljaz into goal – I’ll go to sleep smiling ’cos that has never happened before, I mean he’s young and doesn’t have kids and all!

Leaders spent around 3 h 5min on the 91km, so in spite of me hammering away at my risers in frustration over lack of decent lift on several occasions, it can’t have been too bad.

Mads Syndergaard

Today Ronny managed to persuade the powers that be that the ordered launch hasn’t really been necesarry in all the years they have run the Monarca event, in spite of the number of participants being the same. From the beginning the intention has been to let the top ranked pilots launch whenever they wanted to, and on this first day the rankings would be decided by WPRS, however with 75 minutes from Window Open till start gate open reason prevailed and the first 15 minutes were made into ”open for all”. This pleased me no end since it allowed me the opportunity to launch first, as I always try to do, and the air immediately dispelled all nerves, as it always does.

Task was a bit of an X, 74.5km of here and there (the locals will know all the names – I don’t, hardly ever flew here before), with a 400m virtual goal cylinder around the Torre launch above Valle de Bravo, and landing down at the official landing field.

Conditions where I was were rough, with relatively strong turbulence if not very strong lift, but others reported good climbs and I have heard rumours of more than 120 pilots in goal, can’t beat that for getting the whole thing off the ground; lots of smiling faces both on launch, in the air (I think) and in the landing field.

We had an exit cylinder start and to me it looked like almost the entire field timed it well enough. Then we went west back to what I believe they call ”crazy thermal”, and from then on over a valley towards the 3 kings and along a forested ridge all the way to the antenna at the end. Ronny had told me that this ridge is like Bassano so I just went for it, never turning once, but in the end it didn’t make much of a difference because the people who thermalled (and most people did, along the way) could push more speed and we all arrived at the first turnpoint around the same time anyway – I bet those who flew higher had a less stressful time of it than me, down in the trees and the wind. From the antenna we went into some flatter country, with some speeding right across to the turnpoint and arriving low but getting good climbs there, and others thermalling a few times on the way, arriving slightly later but higher, and again it didn’t seem to matter so much what you did. There were good climbs at the turnpoint, and then it was time to make the first real route decision of the task. We could either go slightly left from the course line, back onto the 3 kings and over the high plateau from there, or we could go slightly right and hit the area around launch and cross the plateau from there. This time it made a difference as there was good cloud development on the latter route, something I cleverly ignored and paid for with quite some minutes of circling in weak, wind-broken stuff. The last bit of the leg towards the 3rd turnpoint was very shady, but fortunately a convergence sets up in this area and this kept most of us off the deck in spite of very little altitude to play with.

After the 3rd turnpoint it was 180 degrees back the way we came, all over some pretty high ground, and around 10km into the hills just SW of Valle proper, then a quick glide over the end of the lake and into goal.

There’s no official score up yet but I have heard that Eric Reed won the day, with Ari-Pekka Sahlström from Finland in 3rd, but that is about all I know right now. I feel good about having predicted that the US team would be right there in the rankings here, but then again I managed to mention so many in my ramble of a few days ago so it is hardly surprising that I’m getting some of it right…

I really do need to sleep now, am still on European time so my internal clock is insisting that it is almost 5AM now, and the eyes just won’t stay open.

As for team UP I think Torsten and Primoz had a decent day, both their wings are going well and Primoz is attracting lots of attention because of his unusual wing tips. My own wing is also going really well, a bit hard to thermal efficiently but it glides well and is remarkably stable in the almost omnipresent rough stuff. The guys and girls on standard Edges are well pleased with the ease of use of their wings, so all in all I’m happy with what I hear.

More tomorrow,

Mads S”

I have been offline for a bit, busy getting my arse over here and getting installed. Flight went well in spite of two gliders and umpteen t-shirts for the team, and in the end I just got in a cab at the airport (happened to be a Suburban, full-size SUV) and curled up on the back seat while the friendly driver drove me down to Valle – not the safety-conscious thing to do but he seemed like a trustworthy feller and so he was in the end.

Today was my first thermalling day since July last year, but I had prepared myself well by taking a new prototype paraglider and a new harness. I got the harness on all wrong, so wasn’t super comfortable (note to self: when Kurt says a harness is complex and you need the manual then he means it) but otherwise all worked remarkably well and the glider seemed super friendly and does go well.

Unfortunately Ronny isn’t so happy with his proto, he claims he’s losing on glides when there’s some vertical movement, and he’s now at a stage where he wants to fly his old wing tomorrow. This is super annoying since I had put a lot of work into actually getting him a wing for this event, but I can’t argue with his reasoning and would probably have done the same thing myself.

There are so many people to say Hello to, so much to do and they even made me a teamleader (I have persuaded my teammates to take the briefing tomorrow morning) so I really have to go, just wanted to say HI and that Valle is great as ever, in the air and on the ground, and we’re all pretty excited about getting this show on the road tomorrow.

Oh and by the way the big inaugural celebration was cool in a relaxed, chaotic, Mexican kind of way. We all got a kid to hold hands with during the parade through town, mine was Luis Rafael and he was a friendly, if somewhat shy little gentleman, and the speeches after that weren’t even too long. All in all a remarkable day that fortunately had the ability to remind us all why we bother doing these things.

More to come – hopefully I’ll be less tired tomorrow after a leisurely cruise into goal,

Mads.

I have also happened to come across ”proof” that there will be a rest day during the comp. If Valle de Bravo lives up to its reputation as the most weather-consistent site on the planet this could be a first in my almost 20 years of comps, and I must say I disagree with the idea!

When I travel halfway around the globe, I do it to fly – and I just KNOW that people will be up there on launch flying no matter if it is a rest day or not! I was thinking; one thing that COULD actually make sense, IF we do fly every day during the upcoming event, would be to throw in a discard. So that if we do get to fly 13 days in a row, pilots get to discard their worst day score.

I know I’m daydreaming here, but just think about it; it is really unlikely that all pilots have the same ”tired day” (day 7 of 13). It is much more likely to see that some pilots are tired after a few days, some more towards the end, and either way they get to discard that one ”tired day” where the whole system just didn’t want to cooperate.

And if this new system takes a bit of the pressure off the racers well then so much the better! It’ll be a safer event overall, with less stress, more smiling faces, more laughs. I base that on the fact that numerically speaking 75 people will come in the bottom half of the scores on day one. This will, for all intents and purposes, exclude these 75 pilots (or more depending on the scoring curve) from any hopes of a decent final result, although the abysimal result could be due to stress, bad form, inca quickstep or any number of other mishaps rather than due to pilot incompetence. So, these 75 pilots will be feeling low but still have to pump up the motivation for 12 days thereafter – maybe they are scoring for their team, maybe they just won’t give up, but at the heart of the matter they’ll be out of the race.

Whereas if there was just one lousy discard (in hopefully 13 days) then that first day of bad luck wouldn’t spell disaster, it would still be possible to hope, it would matter what you did for the rest of the event; the event wouldn’t be over after the first day!

I think I’m making sense here. Just hope some of the CIVL delegates are reading this blog so the discussion may begin before the next big FAI event,

Mads Syndergaard

I’ll be listing some of the obvious, and some of the less obvious, here below. If you’re not mentioned it is probably my bad judgement – I hope you win all the same! After all, if I got this list right it’d be boring. Also please note that this is a totally subjective work of fiction based on assumptions and pure guessing, so if you get annoyed at me for something I’m writing here you should rather be amused that I’m bothering with your name at all!

Lets start by the insiders who are really hungry:

Andi Aebi – he has proven that he can win (PWC 08) and I was really impressed by his patience in Niska Banja last summer. Patience is important in this FAI comp game!
Jeremie Lager – probably even more hungry than Andi; but my guess is he hasn’t yet got the stamina necesarry for coming top 7 every day for 12 days in a row…In a few years if he keeps it up like he’s going now.
Simon Issenhuth – same as above: hungry, but young and perhaps a bit on the gung-ho side for FAI championships
Brothers Valic – they are hungry, they have proven that they can fly well in Valle (Monarca last year) and they are arguably the most talented pilots to emerge in recent years. Yet for some reason I fear they’ll be TOO hungry and bomb out once each. I hope I’m wrong.

Outsiders who are hungry:

Yassen Savov – he won the Monarca and is likely to be feeling on top of the world, but it could also be that his form peaked 3-4 weeks too early.
Primoz Podobnik – he’s living in a Valic shadow, and that can’t be fun. I bet he’s eager to get outta there
Micky von Wachter – very fast, relaxed pilot who may even be able to hold it together if he’s in the lead – but he’s an outsider all the same
Any of the US boys – they know Valle and are keen to prove themselved on their home turf. I have never flown with Farmer (Matt Beechinor) but I have heard that he’s good, and I know that Brad is fast. Consistency is going to be the hurdle for all of these, and staying cool in case they get a good start to the comp and are in the top rankings from day one.

Outsiders who could surprise:

Nevil Hulett – he has taken a lot of shit from all of us for years for nevilling, and then he goes and flies a bloody brilliant world record all on his own just to let the air out of that balloon. Turning up with the
feel-good account all charged up to max is not a bad point-of-entry, and nevilling is a very important skill to have for an FAI championship
André Rainsford-Alberts – another of South Africas finest, he’s in my view possibly the fastest paraglider pilot on Planet Earth. I’m certain he’ll be taking at least one task and maybe more, and I hope he’ll not f*ck it all up on other days, but truth be told consistency is going to be his main challenge. If only we could morph him and Nevil…

Ronny Helgesen – he was a SkyGod when I learnt flying in the late eighties, he knows Valle better than anyone else, he’s flying a brand new UP proto that is probably fantastic, and he’s been on a surprising upwards curve for the last 3-4 years considering he’s been doing comps for more than 20 years.
Mark Hayman – fellow XCMag blogger the Hymenator is very consistent, has extensive competition experience (snowboarding, but the mind game is the same) and he’s the consistent one of the Brits

The Usual Suspects:

Chrigel Maurer – no need to go into details here
Olli Rössel – if he’s hungry enough. He certainly has the skills
Torsten Siegel – same as above, the hunger is the unknown factor
Tomas Brauner – he can do it for sure, only I have said that many times before and he hasn’t. I wonder what’s keeping him?
Luca Donini – not an outsider any more if you look purely at his track record, yet he’s still somehow an outsider. Probably because most of the others are more or less full-time pilots and Luca is not. I see that Luca has changed to a Boomer, could be a good call
Greg Blondeau – obvious isn’t it? Although his style in the past has been racier than what is good for this sort of event he did prove that he could do it in Niska Banja. My guess is his chances depend a lot on how the first day goes. Can’t really see Greg working his way up from behind.

Pilot who would have done it already if they were ever going to:

Stephan Wyss – he’s f*cking brilliant yet he rarely gets onto the podium. Needs some intensive mind coaching to get his mind around to accepting the fact that he deserves it as much as the next man
Martin Orlik – hmmm, 5-6 years ago I would have put him further up the list. I don’t think he’s so hungry anymore
Myself – can fly well if the bug bites me, but it seems to be an elusive bug. Not having thermalled since the Nordic Open 2008 probably isn’t the best preparation either.
Nikolay Shorokov – he’d have done it by now if he was ever to do it, just like the next person on the list:
Frankie Brown – Frankie’s move away from Gin was probably good for his personal financial situation, but it hasn’t helped his score card. Who knows what André Rottet has concocted for the Worlds?
Russ Ogden – another one of those pilots who, like fellow UK rep Wagga Watts, has the objective skills to win a meet like this, yet fairly consistently manages to botch it quite severely. Like I wrote for Stephan
Wyss I think it is a matter of some quality coaching mumbo-jumbo to make his (their) mind(s) accept that there’s really no reason why it couldn’t be them. I don’t want to be the one coaching Wagga though – he’ll just hit me in my face

That makes 21 pilots on my own personal short list, plus the 6-7 pilots on the “should have already” list. Can’t accuse me of excessive elitism, that’s bloody half the field! And by the way, among the girls Ewa is the more natural pilot but Anja is hungrier. Claudia can learn too, but she’ll need mind coaching to believe in herself. My personal favourite is Elisa Houdry, just because she’s such a mellow and humble person. Humble is great in many situations but it isn’t what you want for winning top sports events though, so Elisa stick the humbleness in the drawer for a bit there and go and kick some bottom.

Still no news from the UP guys who have been flying their new toys in Valle today – maybe they have forgotten me???

Cheers from Mads S

At UP we don’t really believe that whichever manufacturer goes home with the trophy will sell many more gliders – but we know that this event is a fantastic opportunity to do a number of very different things:

1. We get to test our latest comp protos against the newest and the best that our co-manufacturers have to offer at the moment. Quite a few of the big ones have brought out new wings for this event, and we’re obviously keen to see how our latest ideas compare to those of the other designers
2. We, or I to be more precise, get to network on a level that just isn’t possible anywhere else at any time between these events. Some of this networking is among existing friends that I just don’t get to see very often; can’t wait to say Hi to all my mates from all over! But a large part of the networking is also about meeting new people, possibly even from markets where we’re not currently well represented.
3. This comp will also serve to cement the relationships between the UP Race Team pilots. With Torsten Siegel’s imminent departure from UP (right after the event) I have been busy restructuring the comp activities – not because Torsten hasn’t been doing a great job, he has, but because any forced change is also an opportunity for voluntary change, and we’re grasping that opportunity to expand our team activities and get our pilots involved on a whole new level. This event should give me an indication of how well the changes are going to work, and what direction I need to follow in the upcoming months.

To say that the last few weeks have been hectic at my desk would be understating things. One of the more challenging things has been to work out which prototypes we had available, and who would be flying them. As it turns out we have got 5 different protos in this event. Three of these are so new they have hardly flown before – they are flown by Torsten Siegel, Primoz Podobnik from Slovenia and Ronny Helgesen from Norway. About ½ hour ago I got a Skype message from Primoz that he had arrived in Valle and turned over one of the protos to Ronny – who is reported to be dancing down the street huggin’ his new baby J So he and Primoz will be flying their new babies tomorrow, and I may be getting the first feedback tomorrow night (exciting…).

I’m actually not sure when Torsten arrives in Valle, so I can’t even get too excited about when I’ll be getting his first feedback… I myself will be flying a slightly older, but re-trimmed proto, and Olli Rössel will also be on a wing that is already proven in comps during the latter part of last season.

As the comp coordinator I would have loved nothing better than to be able to supply the whole team, including the 6 pilots flying standard Edges, with new weapons for the event – but these things can’t be rushed and the fact of the matter is, as you can see from the number of different protos present, we simply weren’t ready with a wing that could be passed on to non-factory pilots. Tough luck.

Where a few of the other brands are going down a path of ever-increasing internal bracing the UP wings are going the other way. Our designer Stephan Stieglair is getting progressively better at maintaining the wing shape he wants by using intelligent soft design features, and he’s even radically reducing the Mylar used in the leading edge to maintain LE shape both during inflation and flight. My personal guess is that this Worlds will be inconclusive as to which direction is the most efficient, but on a personal level it does make sense to me to keep a paraglider soft, both so that I can pack it away and so that it can pack itself away if the airmass is doing ugly things to it – hopefully to unpack again in a hurry before I get too scared…

The most radically new design feature by UP in this event are the ears on Primoz’ proto. I won’t reveal all just yet but I can let you have Stephans idea, which was to put proper winglets on a wing for once. And no they don’t look ANYTHING like the winglets on Advance wings. Primoz has brought his old wing too, just in case it turns out to be a dead end design-wise, but he did already fly it back home in Slovenia a few days ago, and he was raving afterwards. The open question is, will 10m/s thermals make the new wing look as good as the 2-3m/s winter stuff he experienced back home the other day? Time will tell.

Enough for now – I’ll be back as soon as I think of something more to say, or as soon as I have feedback from some of the guys,

Mads