The Podium is within Reach!

Another day of heavy land-outs. Particularly the cloud cover north east of Szeged where 18m and 15m had their last turnpoints, proved to be very difficult.

In 15m Class only 12 of 49 contestants completed the task. 18m Class had only two finishers. All our pilots landed out. Olga Burany, Pim and I went with Diane to retrieve Willem who had landed just 10k short of Szeged. As we got close to his landing location, we could see the Serbian border crossing. Fortunately Willem had landed on the Hungarian side of the border. The extra woman- and manpower came very handy when we needed to maneuver the glider and trailer in a soft field so we could de-rig.

Jerzy is the hero of the day! He landed 27 km short of Szeged which puts him in third place for the day with a whopping 880 points. Since there were only two finishers, the scoring is basically like a distance day with a minimum amount of speed points. Right now, the overall score shows him in 3rd place, only 13 points behind 2nd place. Depending where Uys Jonkers from South Africa landed, Jerzy will either maintain third position or slip to 4th or 5th. In any case, I believe this is the best result of any Canadian in the Worlds in at least the last 30 years. We are all very excited and are keeping our fingers crossed!

It is questionable if tomorrow will be a flying day. Today's scores could very well be the final scores of these Worlds.