Monday, August 01, 2005

How Many Spaniards Does it Take to Beat One Aussie?

....obviously more than 80! Dave Seib just sent me the latest breaking news from the Spanish Open.. Dave Seib writes I got there, Yeh hah Granma!!! I woke in the morning to the cloud base well and truly below the top of the hill and 100% cloud cover. It wasn’t looking good for the last day of the comp. The previous two days had been cancelled and I’d been sitting on the 134 point deficit for the lead since then. However, as with quite a few other days during the comp, the conditions in Arcones improved as the day progressed and by noon the most of the cloud had disappeared and the base had risen. By the time we were ready to launch, the sky was completely blue – my sort of conditions. It had been a two week competition and a lot of people had left, so with all the ABS’s, DNF’s and the expected pilots landing short due to difficult conditions I knew I had to go for speed points and early bird points to make up the point difference. A 90km task predominately on the ridge was called with two difficult excursions to the flats. I launched first and setup for the first start gate. It was really hard flying but I managed to get around the course in two hours and forty minutes and landed at goal 53 minutes before anyone else. The next person into goal launched 45 minutes after me and flew eight minutes slower, this is good but where is Kiko. He ended up coming in much later after taking the last launch, one hour after I launched. I had to wait 4-5 hours before the results were published but I ended up with a 22 point lead. The presentation party was really good, lots of Spanish meat, beer, wine and rum – once again my sort of conditions. I know from my previous 2 Spanish Nationals that there are a lot of good pilots there and he would have been faced with a new site and different conditions.. Congratulations Dave on an outstanding performance you are going to be the next Australian champion!!!!