Competition News

The weather did not look very promising when we arrived at takeoff today, as the clouds were very low and on top of that we even had high clouds. That’s why we set an easy 60km task. It had a 33km entry around P10 and then we had to take the same turnpoint with 20km. To next turnpoint was already the goal, which was at the Rio Doce on the way to Valadares.
When they opened the window at 11, pilots were still struggling to climb in front of the takeoff. However, the high clouds disappeared and everybody managed to climb for the airstart at 12. At first pilots were still a little defense and not pushing much, especially because the climbs on the other side of the valley were weak. On the right side of the turnpoint we saw already overdevelopment and rain. Nick Greece was pushing a lot and found an awesome line, as the outflow of the rain pushed all the thermals on our way. We could fly fullspeed without turning. The leading group was really fast and Michael Küffer took the lead back to the City of Baixo Guandu. Here the sun was out and conditions were great. Only after we crossed the river we got low, because the nice cloud over sunny ground was not working at all. To our surprise we found an acceptable thermal in the shade… From there we did not have any problem until the ESS. BUT: many of us left the last thermal too early and sinking air and headwind forced many pilots to land after the ESS, but before the river and the goal on the other side… I arrived at the ESS with the first pilots, but had to climb to get over the river… Michael Küffer did a nice race and got third in goal. The other Swiss are a little behind.